


Ghost in the Machine

by supercarXS



Series: Ghost in the Machine [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Cars, Gen, Head Injury, Other, POV Dean Winchester, mechanophilia sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-01
Updated: 2017-07-15
Packaged: 2018-05-10 22:43:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 29,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5603653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/supercarXS/pseuds/supercarXS
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A run-of-the-mill hunt goes awry for Sam and Dean, and the elder Winchester brother is badly wounded by a blow to the head. It's no surprise when Dean begins to hear a voice in the midst of delirium but he's shocked when it seems his beloved Chevy is the source.</p><p>Maybe he's finally lost it. Or maybe, just maybe, the Impala isn't a normal car after all...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I love this show. Hot men, sexy car... what more could you ask for? 
> 
> I've only just finished Season 6 so you'll have to forgive me for any continuity errors. I tried to write this without relying on the plot of any given season so feel free to think of the story wherever you see fit.
> 
> Anyway, first Supernatural fic -- I'd love it if you'd drop me a line, tell me what you think, leave kudos, whatever turns your driveshaft ^_^

**_[dean winchester]_ **

I’m not sure what finally did me in – it was either the _crunch_ of hoof meeting forehead, or the _crack_ of skull meeting sheet metal – but I was glad that it knocked me out quick.

Getting kicked in the head by a horse isn’t fun, especially when that horse is extremely pissed off, weighs half a ton, and literally wants to eat your still-beating heart right out of your chest. (God, I hate skinwalkers. I really do.) Luckily for me, the monster had damn good aim, and like I said it knocked me out fast and spared me the immediate pain. I think I woke up once and found that my brother had managed to stuff me in the backseat of my Impala with towels piled under my head to sop up the blood.

Head wounds always bleed like hell, right? Had to look way worse than it really was.

I must’ve pulled out of unconsciousness again, long enough to be pissed off that Sam was driving my car, and long enough to understand that he was going to leave me here for a few minutes while he went into the store to get a phone charger because his broke, and he’d be back quick, okay? So just hang in there for a little while, and _don’t_ move.

Full awareness teased the corners of the blackness. Eventually, I was able to push my way out, and though my vision swam and my head throbbed like – well, like it’d been kicked by a horse – and my first thought was damn, Sammy left the radio on. There was music in the car. A low, pleasant female voice humming the words to a song I knew but couldn’t tack a title to.

_Don’t believe the church and state, and everything they tell you…_

I groaned and forced myself to sit up, because let’s face it. I cared more about the Impala than I cared about life itself. (I’m pretty sure my final dying words will be ‘Don’t jack up my baby’.) Replacing a dead battery or jumping the car definitely wasn’t something I wanted to worry about right now, so I hoisted myself up, ignored the way my brain sloshed around like jelly inside my skull, and went for the radio.  

_Believe in me, I’m with the high command…_

What was this shit that Sam was listening to? Some modern acapella cover of classic ‘80s rock? I growled to myself and waited for my mind to make sense of the watery images my eyes were feeding it.

_Can you hear me running, can you hear me calling you…?_

I paused with my fingers inches from the controls.

The radio wasn’t on.

What?

_Can you hear me? Can you hear me running…? Can you hear me running, can you hear me calling you…?_

I couldn’t see a damn thing. It was dark outside and the dark leather interior of the dark Impala didn’t exactly help the situation. Fear started to tighten its grip on me. I was confused as all hell, I was injured, and I was alone… unless I wasn’t.

Somebody was singing, and that somebody was inside the car with me _._ Sounded that close and that loud. It didn’t sound bad, and in my dazed state of mind I wondered if I should lay back down and let it lull me to sleep, but the fear struck me all over again when I realized I couldn’t see the source of the voice.

If you stay in the hunting business long enough, you know that the things you can’t see are the ones you should be the most afraid of.

Some years ago, I’d torn all the door panels out and rigged holsters to the insides so I could stash various weapons out of sight. The door closest to me (driver’s side rear) concealed my favorite hunting knife. My touch grazed the edge of the smooth bone handle. Slowly, very slowly, I reached up, closed my hand and slotted my fingers into the grooves carved into the grip.

_There’s a gun and ammunition just inside the doorway… use it only in emergencies…_

I pulled the blade out of the door panel. It came free with the _pop_ of a metal snap loosening. Passenger’s seat. There was a shadow there, I was sure of it. Or so I thought. My damaged head was playing tricks on me. Maybe. I sat up, slowly, didn’t pay any mind to the way my center of gravity shifted and tried to drag me back down into the seat, and prepared to strike.

The voice stopped singing.

Then, _Uhh… Dean? What are you planning on doing with that? There’s nothing there; I checked. I think. Maybe I missed something… Dammit, Sam! Now would be a_ great _time to come back!_

I launched myself at the passenger’s seat, brandishing the knife, reaching out with my other hand to secure the monster in question before dispatching it with a swift blow to the neck… but my fist balled on empty air. My chest thumped the back of the seat, and I caught myself with my elbows, breathing hard. What the hell?

The strange female voice spoke frantically. _Oh, shit! It’s here? How did I miss this? …What did I miss? I still can’t find anything…_

“Who are you?” My own voice rasped in my throat and a new headache blossomed along my scalp as I dragged myself into a seated position.

 _Oh, yeah, Dean. Wonderful idea. Let’s talk to the monster because that_ always _works out._

I cleared my throat, let my brow settle low over narrowed eyes, licked my lips, breathed in, and said, “I’m talking to _you_ , dumbass.”

Silence.

Something vibrated through the air, and I swore I felt my Impala shift just the slightest bit with the quietest creak of the suspension. Something inside the machine changed. The presence I felt lurking in the background suddenly slammed to the front of my awareness.

_…Me?_

“Do you see anybody else here?” Something itched my eyebrow; I thumbed at it and felt the stickiness of coagulating blood.

_Ah… no. No I don’t. That’s… that’s why I’m confused._

“Well, whoever you are,” I grumbled, grimacing when I felt the words slur on their way out. Maybe I was hurt worse than I realized. After all, my head had been smashed between a hoof the size of a dinner plate and the door of the Impala. “I don’t care how hot you sound – get the hell outta my car!”

 _I… Dean, you can_ hear _me? How is that possible?!_

“You’re yelling in my ear! Of course I can hear you!” Hallucinating. Definitely hallucinating. “Look, I don’t want a fight. You walk away right now and I won’t come after you, whatever you are.”

_No, Dean! I’m not a bad guy! Holy shit, all these years, man. All these years and all it takes is a good knock to the head? I… I can’t get over this. I can’t. I mean, you can hear me! Driver, you can HEAR ME!_

My eyes widened. I let myself slip against the backboard of the seat in front of me, resting my chin on the edge. Where the hell was Sam? I was fairly certain I was going insane. Maybe I needed a hospital. “What… what did you call me?”

_Oh, my God. I can’t believe this. Dean. Dean! You know who I am. You’ve known me your whole life, man. I haven’t talked to anyone since your father. Anyone who’s been able to hear me, anyway. Holy hell, driver. All this time…_

“You… you aren’t…” I slipped from the seat and sort of slumped over in the back, half on the floor, half propped against the door panel. The knife was still wrapped tightly in a clenched fist. My next words balled in the back of my throat, blocked by a tongue that suddenly felt as thick as a tree trunk. I barely spat them out. “You can’t be—“

“Dean? Who are you talking to?” Sam threw open the door and sat a few plastic bags on the seat next to me.

The realization was slowly eking its way into my bruised brain. My eyes widened as Sam’s narrowed with concern. He tilted his head. “Dude. You okay?”

 _Oh, shit, did I scare you?_ The female voice cracked into my brain again.

“Ya think?” I coughed, and began to laugh because I was certain of two things: I suddenly knew who was talking to me, and I’d completely lost my fucking mind.

“Dean?” Sam again, reaching towards me as my head lolled to the side and a delirious grin split my features. “Who are you talking to?”

I slumped to the side. My head thumped the window.

“Talkin’ to Baby,” I slurred.

Sam blinked, then sighed and rolled his eyes. “Seriously. You’re having a conversation with the Impala.”

“Yeah, well…” My cheek brushed the collar of my button-up shirt, and I knew I was losing the fight to stay awake. “She started it.”


	2. Chapter 2

According to the scratched face of my watch, it was close to four in the morning when I finally came around again.

The Impala must have felt me stirring, because she called to me. _Good morning Dean. Or something._

“Good morning… car.” I rubbed at my temples and sat up slowly to keep gravity from shifting beneath me. We weren’t moving, and once again, Sam was absent from the driver’s seat. I blinked and tried to clear my vision because there was a huge black shape filling up the windshield—

“Son of a bitch,” I muttered. The hood was up. Why was the hood up? Before I could think better of it, I kneed the door open and stumbled into the cold Colorado air, watching my breath crystallize in front of me as I staggered through the snowbank piled on the side of the road.

_Hey! Get back here,_ my car scolded.

I ignored her.

_You’re in no condition to be up,_ she went on.

“Whatever.” I slashed a hand out to silence her, then gritted my teeth. “This is _your_ fault.”

Sam’s head snapped around, and he must have thought my comment was directed at him, because he looked hurt as he stuffed an oily rag into his pocket and started towards me. “No, no, no, Dean! Get back in the car. I got this.”

“What’s wrong?” I ambled over to him and braced my palms against the fender, peering under the hood, only slightly relieved when I didn’t see smoke billowing from the engine block. Quick scan: coolant level good, carburetor didn’t seem to be stuck, alternator and battery both connected… “Quit moving that light, Sammy! I’ve already got vertigo!”

“Sorry.” Sam straightened up and scratched at the back of his neck with his free hand. “It ah… it just stopped running.”

“Did she?” I snatched the red rag out of his pocket and calmly checked the oil level. It was the color of honey: clean, and exactly level. I drove the dipstick back home and leaned on the still-warm valve cover and peered into the guts of the machine.

“Yeah. I was driving and then bam. Stalled out.”

“Run her outta gas?” I yanked the flashlight out of his hands and dropped down onto my hands and knees, casting the light over the undercarriage.

“Nope. Filled up about an hour ago.”

“What kind?”

“Premium just like you told me. Dean, get back in the car. You’re hurt.”

There weren’t any leaks, none that I could see, and the snow underneath the car was still white and free of oil spots. So, I stood, using the chrome grille for support, shoved the light back into Sam’s hand, leaned forward, and asked my car, “What’s wrong with you?”

_He was gonna run me off the road. It’s like he’s never driven in the snow!_

My eyes cut to the side and I took a long, hard look at the low-slung machine. Her dark sides were spattered with dirty white snow and that salt shit they put on the roads to melt the ice. The fenders just behind her rear tires were absolutely caked with the stuff, and a nice, huge buildup of ice and muck jutted from her frame. “Dammit, Sam,” I growled, and tried to stomp back through the snowbank… but then my legs decided they didn’t want to carry me, so I sort of fell off to the side of the road. Sam was beside me in an instant with both hands on my shoulders. I shook him off and rose to my feet, a hand clamped around my gut as the world tilted and swayed again.  The road turned in circles and writhed like a snake, and I was suddenly glad that I hadn’t had time to eat recently, because I would’ve definitely gotten sick right there had there been anything in my stomach.

I swallowed the nausea and slapped a palm against my Chevy’s window until the world quit moving again. I blinked and narrowed my eyes, trying to find a solid point to ground myself to.

Wait a minute. Those tire tracks really _were_ spiraled. I stood up, bared my teeth, and rounded on Sam. “You spun her out!” 

“I… ah…” He cleared his throat.

“What the hell, Sammy!”

“I couldn’t tell how icy it was! I locked up the wheels coming around that turn and then—“

My breath billowed out of me through clenched teeth. “It’s a ’67, _Sam_. That means no fancy antilock brakes!”

“I know! I know. I’ll drive slower.” He gritted his teeth and glanced back towards the open hood. “If we can, uh, get it running again. Did I…?”

“Fuck something up?” I gritted my teeth and braved a shake of my head. “Yeah. You pissed Baby off.”

“Pissed off?”

_Yeah! You drive like a jackass in the snow! Don’t swing two tons of rubber, metal, and glass around like it’s not gonna hurt ya because guess what? You lose control and we’re all DEAD! AGAIN!_

“I know, I know,” I muttered, and touched the car gently. “Is that why you stalled?”

_Well, I wasn’t gonna let him keep on driving like that._

Then my knees gave, and my brother yelled. “Dean!”

I was in the snow again, this time the cold seeping through my jeans and chilling my ass. The back of my head smacked the door panel _again_ as I fell, and a groan pushed its way out of me, and unwanted stars exploded behind my eyes like fireworks. I dodged the hand Sam reached towards me with a snarl.

“Put the tire chains on,” I ordered. “They’re in the trunk.”

“Okay. I’ll do that. Come on. Back into the car.” He knelt beside me and slipped his arms under mine, hoisting me up. It took a lot of effort on both our parts to get me into the backseat again, but we managed, and with a groan I let my aching head plop down into the pile of bloodied towels.

“Take it easy on her,” I demanded, “or I’ll gut you.”

“Yeah, Dean. I will.” Sam tugged on one of the towels so it would cover the leather seat. Then, to himself: “if I can get the damn thing to start…”

“She’ll start for you now.” I glared at the door panel like the Impala could see me. Not sure she could. “Won’t you?”

My car’s response was flat: _Sure._

“She better. I gotta get you some help.” Sam stepped back to shut the door on me, but not before I’d seen the scarlet smear on his jeans as he wiped his hand.

My blood.

* * *

“Oh, hell no, Sammy.” I rolled over so my shoulder thudded against the back of the seat I was curled up in. From this angle, I couldn’t see much, but I’d seen the signs on the highway on the way in. This was a hospital. I balked and buried my face in the towels with dizzied, childish logic: if I couldn’t see him, then he couldn’t see me!

Sam’s shoulders rose as he inhaled sharply. “Listen to me, Dean,” he said firmly, voice no longer ‘concerned younger brother’, but instead edging towards ‘pissed-off parent’. “This is for your own good, and you don’t have a choice here, so you shut up and do as I say. Got it?”

My gaze drifted and settled on the dashboard.

_Hey, don’t look at me. I’m not gonna help you outta this one._

I wet my lips, put on my best pouty face, and sighed heavily.

_Sorry, but I agree with Sam. You’re hurt a lot worse than you think you are and we can’t take any chances here._

Sam gritted his teeth and locked me with a cold stare that filled up the rearview mirror. “Our story is this: our neighbor’s horse jumped the fence last night and he called us to help catch it. You managed to catch it by the halter while I followed with a rope, but it reared up and caught you in the forehead and bounced you off the side of a truck. Okay?”

I would have nodded had I not been afraid of launching into another dizzy spell. “No skinwalker. Got it.”

“Good.” Sam eased the Impala to a halt, and no sooner had her RPMs fallen to idle did he snatch the keys out of the ignition and bolt around to collect me. He hoisted me up onto my feet with an arm draped across his shoulders. I swayed like a skyscraping tree in the wind, unable to find my balance and pissed off that he’d dragged me to the fucking hospital.

_You’ll be fine, driver._

It was snowing. Of course it was snowing. I threw a glance over my shoulder at my low-slung car. “Don’t leave me.”

_Nah. I’m staying right here._

“I’m not going anywhere,” Sam responded. Ah. He thought the question was directed towards him. Fine. Let him think that. The sliding double doors hissed as they shot open. I squinted as the fluorescent lighting slashed into my eyes and irritated my bruised brain.

_One more thing, Dean,_ my Impala called from inside my mind.

I swallowed blood that had found its way to the back of my throat. “Yeah?”

_Don’t… don’t talk to me. I know how hard it’s gonna be – I’m excited about this whole deal too – but you can’t talk to me. Not out loud. Not unless you want to be dumped in the looney bin the next chance they get. I’ll still be here. You just can’t talk to me._

I wondered if it was even worth nodding at her, because it almost sent me to the floor. My brother caught me with a grunt in his throat. “Take it easy, Dean.”

“Don’t take Baby away,” I murmured. “I need her.”

Sam’s sidelong glance was enough to get me to shut up for the rest of the night.


	3. Chapter 3

“So what do you want first: the bad news, the worse news, or the worst news?”

I heard Sam’s voice before I even opened my eyes. Consciousness was fuzzy, and when I pried my eyelids apart, I immediately slammed them shut again. “Turn that light off,” I moaned and shoved myself further into the overstuffed pillow behind my head.

Sam started to say something, but then he shrugged and turned to the window. He paused a moment, staring into the grayness outside, and then dropped the blinds. Darkness flooded the small hospital room and I breathed a sigh of relief as the irritating glare subsided.

After a moment of silence filled only by the humming in the vents and the beeping of a heart monitor, I drew in a breath. “So, what, there’s no _good_ news?”

My brother shook his head and took his place next to my bed. “Not really. Sorry.”

I sighed in my throat and folded my hands over my stomach. “All right, Sammy. Start slow. What’s the bad news?”

He got right to it: “You have a severe concussion and ten stitches in your forehead.”

“Fuck. Really?” I gingerly probed my forehead, and sure enough, there was a piece of gauze taped there, and beneath that I could feel the stinging sutures. I showed my teeth in a wince when pain slashed at my brow.

“Yeah – and they want to keep you here until tomorrow morning for observation, since you can’t seem to stay conscious for very long.” Sam folded his arms over his chest and blew through his lips with a glance to the window. “Not that we’d have an easy time getting out of here anyway. It’s been snowing nonstop for hours. Roads are a mess.”

“Wonderful.” I stifled a yawn and scratched absently at my stubbly cheek. “What’s the worse news?”  

“I… I, uh, lost the skinwalker.”

Took me a minute to process that one. Maybe it was my damaged head unable to push through all the clutter in my mind and make sense of it, or maybe it was me not wanting to believe what he’d just told me. “ _What_? You didn’t kill it?!”

“Don’t give me that, Dean.” Sam was immediately on the defensive, towering over me with a finger thrust in my direction. “I got a few bullets in it but it got away before I could finish the job.” He took his lower lip in his teeth. “Besides, I was freaking out a little bit. I couldn’t tell if it was blood or brains leaking out of your skull. Sorry, but _you_ were my main concern last night.”

I was silent for a long moment, thinking. There was genuine brotherly concern written in the hard lines of his face, so I decided that getting pissed that he’d let our target go could wait. I sighed. “Fine. We tracked it down once. We’ll find it again.” I turned my head and felt my neck pop in protest and realized just how cramped up I was. I tried to sit up and was rewarded with a lurch of my stomach as the corners of my vision blurred and spun and turned the hospital room into an array of dizzying spots of light. My eyes slid closed and I clenched my jaw against it. Once I got a handle on it, I propped myself up on my elbows. “How the hell does it get worse than that, Sammy?”

My brother fumbled for the controls on the bed, seeing that I was having trouble sitting up on my own, and with a whirring of electric motors I felt the mattress contact my back and take the stress off my spine. I resisted for a minute, not wanting to show vulnerability by collapsing again, but this was my brother. He’d seen me at my absolute worst. There was almost nothing I could hide from him. I eased into the bed and eyed him as he tucked the remote back into its holster on the side of the bed.

“I hate to say this, but I think there’s something wrong with the Impala,” he started, and when I bared my teeth he put up a finger and went on. “I tried to leave a little while ago to see if anyone in town had seen the skinwalker, but the car wouldn’t start.”

I stared at him, horrified, mind racing as I flipped through my mental index of possibilities. “Did it crank?”

He shrugged. “At first. After a few tries it didn’t. Then it wouldn’t even let me turn the key.” He shook his head and threw a glance outside. “I think the hood froze shut, too. I couldn’t get the latch to release.”

_You told me not to leave you._

I startled as the soothing voice eked into my mind. I knew I recognized it, but with all the muck in my head right now, I couldn’t put a face to it.

Then I remembered. “Baby?”

_You’re my driver. You tell me to do something and I’ll do it. So, I won’t leave you, Dean._

“My car’s fine.” I raised an eyebrow at Sam.

“Look, I know you don’t want to hear it, but every car’s gotta break at some point,” he said apologetically. “You’re in no shape to work on it, and it’s too snowy, anyhow. I’ll let you pick a shop in town and I’ll figure out how to get it towed there, okay?”

“No.” I shook my head lightly as not to piss it off. “She stays.”

“Dean, it stalled this morning, too. You can’t tell me nothing’s wrong—“

“My car is _fine,_ Sam.”

“How do you know?” He was exasperated. Understandable.

_Don’t tell him, Dean. They’ll keep you there for longer if you say something about me. Don’t say a word._

I swallowed hard as my damaged brain clunked through a hundred different lies in half a second. Finally, I settled on one that was at least somewhat believable. “She… she always acts up when it’s cold out. Give it a few hours. Fuel pump probably froze.”

_Perfect._

Sam eyed me hard for a moment. I could tell he didn’t quite believe me, but he also knew better than to argue with me when it came to my car, so he glanced down at the floor, nodded, and said, “Well, then, let’s see where we’re at in a few hours. I think we could all use some rest, anyway.”

“Yeah,” I agreed.

Neither of us said much after that.

 

* * *

_Silent Running._

I looked up when I heard Baby’s voice in my head again. Sam was sprawled out on the seat underneath the windowsill, sound asleep with an arm tucked under his head and a hand resting on his hip where I knew he had at least one weapon stowed. “Sam?” I called quietly, and when he didn’t stir, I decided I was safe.

“What’s that?” I asked my car.

_Silent Running. That’s the name of the song I was singing earlier. You didn’t know the name of it._

Two things struck me odd then. I hadn’t spoken that out loud, so how did the Impala know that I wasn’t sure what the name of the song was? Did… did that mean she could read my mind? If that were the case, I supposed it answered my next concern: how she was able to hear me even though we weren’t even close to each other.

There was another explanation, one that nagged me like a gnat trapped inside my skull, and I can’t say I cared for it: this was all in my head.

I dug my nails under the edge of the bandage tacked to my forehead to distract myself. It was driving me crazy, and to be honest, tearing out the sutures would’ve felt like a relief to me. I dug around for something to say to my car to keep from thinking about it. “Where are you?”

_Sam stuck me in the spot furthest away from everything. Currently buried under a foot and a half of snow but hey, at least nobody’s gonna ding my paint. Does make it kinda hard on the snowplows, though. I’ll try to get outta the way if they get too close. I can see your room from here. You’re on the third floor._

“Am I?” I thought about getting up to look out the window, but a wave of vertigo reminded me that probably wasn’t a great idea, and, well, I didn’t want to risk waking my brother up. If anyone deserved to rest right now, it was him.

_Yeah. How’s the head? I guess I didn’t realize just how hard that ‘walker kicked you. I tried to pop the dent in my door out. You’ll have to tell me if it looks like shit._

“I’m fine.”

_Don’t lie to me. I can’t get you out of the hospital any faster, man._

“It hurts. Bad. I feel like someone took an eggbeater to my brain.” Grimacing, I pushed a hand to my skull and for the first time felt the heat of bruising at my scalp. Great. When did Sam say they could release me? Tomorrow morning? That would make twenty-four hours, right? Just had to hang on until then.

My Impala sighed. _I’m sorry, Dean._

“It’s not your fault, Baby.” I furrowed my brow and chewed my lower lip. “That’s your name, isn’t it?”

_No, but it’s what you’ve always called me. It’ll do._

“Okay,” I breathed. Under the window, Sam stirred, and I held my breath for a moment, but when he fell still again I allowed myself to relax. “So… why now?”

_Huh?_

“Why start talking to me now? You’ve been around since before I was even born. Why wait until now?”

_I’ve always talked to you. You just didn’t know how to listen._

“So hitting my head on your door somehow gave me the ability to listen to you?” I pinched my lips and looked towards the shuttered window like I could see her out there in the snowy parking lot.

_Maybe a loose connection got jostled into place. I’m not sure. Your dad and I were able to talk. There are other ways I could’ve gotten you to understand, but… I don’t know. I guess… I guess I was always sort of afraid._

“Afraid?” I raised both eyebrows, though it caused a bolt of pain to stick me in the middle of the forehead. “Afraid of _what_?”

“Hey, Dean…”

I hadn’t noticed that Sam had rolled over to face me, nor that he’d sat up underneath the windowsill and was rubbing at his eyes. I stared at him, eyes wide like I’d been caught with my hand in the cookie jar, but he just tilted his head and gave me the _I’m-worried-about-you_ look.

“Are you okay?” he questioned and started to rise.

“Yeah. Just peachy.” I gave him the best innocent grin I could, but the truth was that I was more than a little irritated that my conversation had been interrupted. There was so much I wanted to know from my car, so many questions I still had for her… and perhaps most importantly, I wanted to know whether or not I was imagining the whole thing.

My brother folded his arms, and when he spoke, his voice was tired, resigned.

“Dean… were you talking to the Impala again?”

I didn’t answer him.


	4. Chapter 4

Sam didn’t know it, but he was lucky that the Impala was talking to me. She stopped me from trying to kill him.

Okay. Maybe that’s a little extreme. But she did convince me that it was okay when he took the keys off the counter. _I’ll make sure he doesn’t put us in a ditch. I promise I’ll take care of him,_ she said when I reared out of bed ready to send a fist into my brother’s face. I threw the punch anyway, but he was a hell of a lot faster than me in my concussed state, and he easily caught my wrist. “Relax, Dean,” he said calmly, and pushed me back. “I’ve gotta go out for a bit. I won’t be long.”

“If you wreck my Baby,” I snarled, “I will feed your guts to the skinwalker. And I will laugh.”

_That’s a little harsh, don’t you think? I told you. I’m not gonna let him do anything stupid._

I bared my teeth.

“I’ll leave the chains on,” Sam said, dropping my wrist. “Try and get some rest and I’ll be back before you know it.”

_I don’t want to leave either, Dean, but I can’t justify leaving him stranded, not now. That ‘walker is still out there and we’ve gotta try to find it._

The Impala was right. I huffed air through my nose. “Drive. _Slowly._ ” The words were spat through clenched teeth. Sam pocketed the keys, pursed his lips with a nod, and slunk out of the room.

In the three hours he was gone, I found out just how fucking bored I was. The docs had banned me from doing literally _everything_ entertaining on account of my head injury. Play around on the tablet? Nope. Phone? Don’t even look at the screen. TV? Sure, but not for very long. (Nothing good on during the day anyway, so I decided to save my allotted time for the nighttime programs.) They wouldn’t even let me have a newspaper. Apparently, focusing on anything like that wasn’t good for my head. I don’t know. That’s what they made it sound like.

All I knew is that I couldn’t wait to get the hell out of Dodge.

So, here’s what I managed to accomplish: I found patterns in the ceiling tiles. Then I graduated to the wood grain on the cabinets on the opposite wall. Then I got up and sat on the window seat until I couldn’t feel my ass and my eyes hurt from staring through the slats of the blinds into the parking lot. The clock drove me insane. I found some soap and a towel in the bathroom tucked in the corner of the room. The nurse told me I could shower as long as I didn’t get my head wet. (Damn sutures. I was tempted to take my pocketknife to them.) So I showered. The hot water felt fantastic. When I got out, I didn’t bother with the gown again, and just wrapped myself up in three layers of blankets and parked as close to the heater as I could get, and that was where Sam found me.

“Took me an hour to get into town,” he grumped as he shouldered the door open, several bags in hand. “Can you believe there was traffic in this weather? People were actually _driving._ ”

The Impala commiserated. _It’s official, Coloradans are crazy. There’s three feet of snow on the ground and they’re just trucking right along. I didn’t see one rear-wheel drive car out there aside from me, though… I was thinking, Dean. How would you feel about putting me on a Blazer chassis?_

“Blazer chassis?” The words were out before I remembered that I probably shouldn’t do that.

Sam didn’t say ‘what the fuck, Dean’ out loud, but his eyes sure did.  

_Yeah! I need me some four-wheel drive. How cool would that be? No, wait, don’t answer that. Shh. I’ll stop talking now._

Flustered, I gave a weak smile and pushed a hand through my hair. Sam cocked an eyebrow, and he stared at me for a long, tense moment. I could feel his scrutiny. “Dean… you’re not wearing clothes, are you?”

Glad for the change of subject, I frowned and pulled the blankets tighter around my body “That gown is _not_ my color, man.”

Sam rolled his eyes and dumped the duffel bag he’d lugged in onto the ground. “I brought your sweats. Get dressed.” He kicked out a chair and sat down, unloading the plastic grocery bags from his arms onto the table. I leaned down, blinking as the blood rushed to my damaged head and shifted gravity, and waited for it to pass before I started pawing through the duffel bag he’d dragged in.

“You doing better?”

“Sure,” I clipped, dragging my clothes into my arms. Figured I probably shouldn’t strip out in the open, so I backed into the bathroom and shut the door and make quick work of changing. A black V-neck tee and a pair of gray sweatpants did the trick, but I was still cold, so I picked up the blankets again and took my place on the window seat.

“Here.” Sam handed me a cup of something warm.

I lifted the lid and sniffed, narrowing my eyes. “Hot chocolate? Where’s my coffee?”

“No caffeine for you. Sorry.” He sipped his coffee like the smug bitch he was.

Ah, well. I wasn’t one to turn down a cup of anything sugary, so I drank it anyway. “What’d you find out?” I asked around the rim of the cup, and realized that yeah, it was actually pretty good.

“Where should I start? What happened a century and a half ago, or what happened a few hours ago?” Sam sat back and rifled through the grocery bags, pulling out one of those boxed salads. “Hungry? I brought you a sandwich.” He withdrew something wrapped in paper and waved it at me.

I caught the underhanded throw and began to fuss with the wrapper. “The skinwalker’s been around that long? I thought the attacks started last week.”

“Started _again_ last week,” Sam said, stirring some gooey dressing into the leaves of his salad. “I wandered into the welcome center and talked with the guy manning the front desk for a good half hour. I guess I didn’t dig deep enough during my first round of research. That skinwalker has been tearing people apart since the early twentieth century. Here.” He slapped a folder onto the table and plucked a photocopied picture from inside. “Check this out. Does that horse in the back look familiar?”

I took the photo from him and looked hard at it. It was a messy copy of what was obviously an ancient picture of a group of haggard-looking men in front of what I assumed was a mining site. I angled it so the light would reflect off the ink, and sure enough, there he was, the son of a bitch that nailed me in the head and put me in the hospital. I’d recognize that silvery coat and massive hooves anywhere.

“No shit?” I breathed. “That’s our guy, isn’t it?”

“I’d put money on it.” My brother pressed his elbows onto his knees, phone in hand. “That photo was taken in 1854 at a now-defunct mine up the mountain a ways. According to history center guy, there have been at least a dozen reports of fatal attacks by this ‘phantom stallion’ in the area over the past century. I’m still trying to work out a pattern, see if I can’t guess where he’s gonna hit next, but Dean, we’ve really gotta watch our backs on this one.”

“Why’s that?” I put the picture to the side and studied him warily.

Sam got right to it: “I think he’s hunting _us_.”

I raised both eyebrows. “Hunting us?”

“Yep. A few hours ago, the ‘phantom stallion’ turned up again.” Sam swiped a few times at his phone, the light flickering over his face, his brow furrowing as he scanned whatever he was looking at. “Here we go. Somebody reported that they saw a rabid horse tearing up a car parked in a driveway. Just absolutely demolishing it.” He gave me a worried look, and my heart skipped a beat in nervousness.

_I’m fine! I’m fine,_ the Impala supplied quickly.

Only mildly relieved, I exhaled. “So… you think it’s after us because it tore up a _car_?”

“It was a 1969 Cadillac Coupe de Ville, and it was black.” Sam’s words rode the tail end of mine, and I fell silent, my sandwich forgotten.

_De Ville? Shit, Dean. Those kinda look like me. Think about it: you don’t get a real good look at me and then see a de Ville later, same color, you might make a mistake…_

“Son of a bitch,” I breathed, glancing towards the now-open window. I could see Baby at the far end of the lot, nestled close to a massive snowbank under an outcropping of evergreen trees. “It’s trying to find the Impala.”

_Maybe I should hide._

“No, Baby. I’ve gotta keep an eye on you.” I hadn’t realized I was speaking out loud to the Impala until Sam’s fork hit the table. When I looked over at him, he had his face shoved into his hands and was scrubbing wearily at his temples. After a minute, he raised his face again, cheeks flushed red from the vigorous rubbing, and shook himself out. I straightened up and resumed working on the sandwich.

I cleared my throat, washed down my mouthful with some hot chocolate, and nodded to Sam. “I think our best bet would be to check out the mine in the morning,” I said, dragging the back of my hand across my lips. Sam just stared at me, his face drawn with concern, but I pretended he wasn’t giving me that look like he thought I was jacked up in the head. “We’ll roll out the second I’m released.” I brightened up at the possibility – I was going stir-crazy just sitting here in the hospital waiting for something to happen, and the thought of tracking down the son of a bitch was thrilling. Couldn’t wait to crack that equine skull.

But my brother was standing now, his arms folded over his chest, and I didn’t like his expression. “I’m not counting on you being cleared by then.”

_Saw this one coming._

I slapped my bare feet onto the ground and rose to meet my younger brother. He was a full head taller than me, and damn it if I’ll admit he was a little bit intimidating now that he’d drawn himself up to his full height, but I didn’t back down. “They told me I’d be cleared tomorrow morning, so you bet your sorry ass I’m walking out of here _tomorrow_ _morning_.”

“Dean—“

“Don’t do this to me, Sammy.” The blood was rushing to my head, making my stitched wound throb and my vision blur. I ignored it.

“You’ve been acting strange since that thing kicked you,” Sam said sternly.

I cut him off. “I always act strange.”

“Not like this, Dean. You’re talking to the car. That’s bad enough. But now you’ve been carrying out conversations like it’s actually responding to you, Dean. That is _not_ normal.”

“Because she _is!_ ” The words were out before I could think better of them. Breathing hard with frustration, I ducked past Sam and stuffed my feet into my boots that waited by the foot of the bed, not even bothering with the laces. “I’m not making it up. I can hear her, Sammy! Something clicked when I got hit in the head but I can hear her!”

_Bad idea, Dean. Bad idea._

I whipped towards the window like she could see me. “You don’t think he needs to know? Why the hell not?”

Before the Impala had a chance to respond, my brother spoke up. “That’s what I mean – what are you doing? Go sit down!” Sam growled and watched as I spun around in search of my jacket. Found it draped over a chair and threw it across my shoulders.

“We’re going on a walk,” I snapped.  “Get your coat on.”

He didn’t move.

“Get your damn coat on, Sam. Or freeze your ass off. I don’t care.” Picking at the bandage taped to my forehead with a thumb, I headed for the door. I was sick of this. Sick of sitting around, sick of the pain, sick of my brother’s concern. Sam wanted to keep me here? Fine. But I wasn’t giving in without a fight. He’d see. He’d see I wasn’t lying about the Impala. He’d have to.

“Dean…?”

I turned up the collar on my jacket with a furious flick of the wrists. “You and me. Right now. We’re gonna go outside, and I’m gonna prove to you that I’m not making this crap up. You’re getting a formal introduction to our _living_ Impala.”


	5. Chapter 5

Not gonna lie – when I saw the Impala at the far end of the lot, backed up to the curb, the thought crossed my mind that I could try to make a break for it before Sam realized what was happening. I’d have no problem ditching his sorry ass for a while. Let him figure out what to do with himself, but I wasn’t going to spend any more time at that damn hospital.

_If you try that, my engine won’t even crank._

“You’re no fun.” Shuffling through the snow, I kicked some at her chrome grille. Some of the fluff settled over her headlight.

If a car could look pissed, Baby definitely did.

Grinning to myself, I eased my tailbone against the Impala’s fender, folded my arms, and faced my brother. He stood a little ways off, mirroring my stance as he shrugged his coat up to his ears and waited.

“I’m worried about you,” he finally said.

“Don’t be.”

“You’re talking to a _car._ What the hell am I supposed to think here, Dean?”

“Look, I already told you. I’m not making this up.” I glanced at the dormant Impala. “This is Baby. That’s what she told me to call her.” I slapped a palm down onto the freezing hood, satisfied when I felt her give just the slightest jolt under my touch like I’d startled her. Something inside her rattled as she shoved air through her intakes, and I was suddenly acutely aware of the energy shifting around her big metal body, simmering with quiet anger towards me.

Leveling my brother with a dark glare, I went on. “When I woke up that first time. I heard singing. Thought you walked away and left the radio on, but lo and behold, when I went to turn it off, guess what? It was OFF!” I extended an arm and jabbed it towards the windshield. “It was her, Sammy! The Impala! She was singing to herself. But you know what? I _heard_ her.”

Skepticism drew hard lines in Sam’s expression.

“I thought there was something in the car. That’s why I had the knife from the door panel. I was ready to gank whatever was in the car with me, but there wasn’t anything in the car because it was the car!” My voice rose an octave, and I sensed that I was rambling, and knew I was probably due for some painkillers or something, but I didn’t care. My blood was up, and I was gonna make Sammy see what I was seeing.

_Stop. Just shut up!_

“I’m not shutting up!” I seethed at the Impala. “Listen to me, Sam. She’s talking to me right now. She’s in my head.” 

“Take it easy, Dean.” Sam stepped towards me. I dodged him and eased a hip against the freezing fender, not caring that cold dampness seeped through the fabric of my pants.

I threw my hand out to halt him. “Let me finish! Remember when she stalled this morning after you spun her out? She quit running because you were driving like a jackass. You were gonna crash us. She was protecting us, Sam, and it was the only way she could get your attention!”

Something dawned on his face, but as quick as it showed up, it was gone. “What about when it would start earlier?”

“She was following orders,” I breathed. “I told her not to leave, so she didn’t. She knew I needed her there and she wasn’t about to let you take her away. But when you went out the second time, she started right up because she knew you _needed_ to run those errands, track the skinwalker – she’s watching out for us. Don’t you see that?”

Sam started towards me. “Yeah, okay, Dean. Try not to get too worked up—“

“The hell I will!” I turned towards the Impala, slamming both hands onto her hood. “Help me out here, Baby!”

_No._

“No?!” My breath froze in the air. It had stopped snowing now, but a heavy fog was starting to settle in, darkening the already gloomy atmosphere. “What do you mean ‘no’?”

_He won’t understand. Not like you. I don’t want him to know about me._

“He’s gonna have me locked up, Baby!” I whipped my arm out of Sam’s grasp. “Please. Just do something. Flash your lights. Show him I’m not delusional!”

_I can’t do that._

“Why the hell not?” I was breathing hard. Thankfully, the Impala was there, because I definitely would’ve face-planted without her to support me. Behind me, I felt Sam with his hands on my shoulders, gently trying to pry me away from the car, and I had to let him because I didn’t have the strength to resist. I sort of stumbled backwards and my shoulder contacted his chest.

“Baby, please,” I begged, voice akin to a whimper.

_I don’t trust him. I’m sorry._

“Come on, Dean. Let’s get back inside.” Calm, like he was speaking to an injured animal. I pinned the inside of my lower lip between my canines and tasted blood. Too tired to fight back, I let him guide me away from the Impala, shoulders sagging in defeat.

“You don’t?” I whispered to her.

_No. I don’t. He doesn’t get it, Dean. I fear he’ll take me for a monster, like I’m possessed or something, and he’ll try to put me down. That’s why I never made myself known before. I’m afraid of him._

I bit my lip harder as I shoved away from Sam and staggered through the snowy parking lot under my own power now. He didn’t stray far, staying within arm’s length, a hand reached towards me in case I fell again. Great. Now, Sam probably thought he was justified in keeping me hospitalized for even longer, and I looked (and felt) like an idiot.

And I hated to even acknowledge it, but as I ran my Impala’s words through my head, the more I realized she might be right about my brother.

* * *

Unsurprisingly, the second Sam got me back into that damn hospital bed, he flagged down the doctor in charge of my case and spoke with her for a long time out in the hallway. I shut him out and ran my thumb over the edge of the Impala’s key until my skin was raw, vowing to myself that I wasn’t gonna say a word to anyone as long as I was trapped here.

_I’m sorry. I think soon I’ll feel confident in Sam, but until then, I think I better keep quiet._

“So you’re gonna let him think I’ve completely lost any shred of sanity I still had?” There was no disguising the hurt in my words.

_Well, I don’t know. I’ve got some thinking to do. You should get some more rest. I bet they probably want to hold you for longer, and maybe they should. I know it’ll be hard but you’ve gotta do it. If not for yourself, don’t you want to put your brother at ease? He’s really concerned, driver. Can’t blame him. You’re all he’s got._

She had a knack for making good points, didn’t she?

Sam came in a few minutes later, followed by the doc, who explained that I was showing signs that my condition was worsening and that they wanted to do another scan to make sure they hadn’t missed anything or that something new hadn’t popped up. The earliest they could get me in was first thing tomorrow morning, so if I could settle down and get some sleep, that would be great, and the nurse would be sent to collect me when it was time.

They fucking tranquilized me. They must have. No way I was that tired, and, really, those pills they gave me really could’ve been anything. I lapsed into a dreamless sleep and didn’t budge until morning.

* * *

At least my nurse was cute.

Blonde hair, blue eyes, small frame – exactly the kind of girl I’d go out of my way to hit on at a bar. I didn’t even complain when she came with a wheelchair to take me on down to the CAT scan room before I’d had a chance to eat. A glance at the clock on the way in told me it was eight a.m. and that I’d slept for a good fifteen hours. Still felt groggy, though.

The nurse dropped me off and told me I was basically at the mercy of the technician manning the controls. He was a heavyset man with thick silvery hair and a beard to match, and he gave me the creeps. Maybe it was his eyes. Dark, searing eyes.

Years of hunting will give you a knack for sensing danger. The skin on the back of my neck pricked. Hair stood on end.

“Could I get you to lie down on the table there?” His voice was kind enough, but I couldn’t help but feel a little claustrophobic when he shut the door of the scan room. Reluctantly, I peeled myself from the wheelchair and eased my ass onto the bed with my head pointing towards the giant plastic donut that was the scanner. The tech waited, and I noticed he kept nervously rubbing his hip, almost like he was constantly checking to make sure something hadn’t been lost.

“To make sure you don’t move,” he explained when he produced straps from somewhere under the table and began to lash them across my torso. He smiled under that beard, dark eyes crinkling up at the corners, and I stared at him in horror.

“Hey,” I grunted when he yanked the strap tight, so tight it sent a bolt of pain through my ribcage. I tried to slip my hand under it to loosen it up, but found that my arms, too, were pinned.

The first whispers of adrenaline spiked in my blood.

“Can’t have you messing this up, can we?” The tech’s voice had suddenly gone dark. He turned to a table in the corner of the room and began to mess with something. My heart rate skyrocketed as adrenaline rushed into my veins, and I suddenly wished Sam had come with me.

Danger. Danger, danger, danger. Something was about to go down.

_Dean? Dean, you okay?_

I wanted to answer the Impala. I really did. I was too scared to even speak, though, so I swallowed the words and tried to struggle out of my bindings, eyes stressed to the limits of their sockets as I tried to keep the tech locked in my sights. He was hunched over, messing with something made of metal. I could hear it clanking against the tabletop.

 _Something’s wrong,_ Baby concluded. _Shit. Where’s Sam? You’re not with him, are you?_

“I have to say,” drawled the tech, and my eyes snapped towards him. He was facing me again, but one arm was behind his back, held out of sight. Another rush of adrenaline ignited my blood, smoldering against the cut on my forehead and pulsing in my bruised brain. “That’s a real nice Chevy you got out there. Saw you with it when I came in last night. Been looking for one just like it.”

Red flags snapped. Adrenaline surged. Tried to find the release on the strap. Couldn’t. Something was jacked here.

“Thanks,” I replied coolly, narrowing my eyes as I tried to play off my nervousness with a grin. (Really hoped he couldn’t see me struggling against the strap.)  

“Hold still,” he said gruffly, too gruffly. “Got a little something for you, just to take the edge off.”

_Oh, hell! Get out of there, Dean! NOW! That’s the –_

Skinwalker.

The son of a bitch pulled a gun.

And I was staring at the wrong end of it.


	6. Chapter 6

“You know,” I said, and painted on a smirk that I hoped made me look a hell of a lot more confident than I felt, “a bullet to the head would solve a lot of my problems, but somehow I don’t think it’s common procedure to kill your patients right before you stick ‘em in the scanner.”

Click.

“Whoa, now.” That nervous grin was back, flicking at the corners of my lips. The skinwalker’s gaze was hard enough to make me shrink away from him as far as the cold metal table behind me would allow. “Whatever I did to piss you off, I’m sorry, but don’t you think the gun’s a little overkill?”

He snarled. “Don’t you try to play dumb with me.”

 _Driver, you hear me? You need to get to me. Understand? I need you to come to me._ The Impala’s voice was calm. Calm, but frantic at the same time. I could almost feel her urgency.

“I’m trying,” I hissed through the side of my mouth, then straightened up when the skinwalker pushed the cold metal barrel of his weapon against the center of my forehead. Stitches caught in the fabric of the bandage that covered them, and I tried not to wince. Couldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing he was causing me pain.

“C’mon, dude.” I pinned the nylon strap lashed over my torso between a thumb and forefinger. Slowly, gently, like any sudden movement would end my life (which really wasn’t that big a stretch of the imagination), I followed it down to the edge of the table. “This is hardly fair. Where’s the fun in executing someone you’ve got strapped down?”

That piqued his interest. I had him distracted.

“I mean, why don’t we hash this out like men?” My hand touched something cold– the fastener? I worked my fingers around it and tugged. The strap gave. I caught it before it fell completely off. The skinwalker’s head inclined just the slightest bit, dark eyes shadowed with confusion and hatred. I smiled slyly, hoping he couldn’t see the way my heart was throwing itself against my ribcage, and went on in a smooth tone. “You untie me and we’ll finish this the _right_ way. I’ll even let you turn into My Little Pony just for kicks.”

Hah. If looks could kill, man. I raised both eyebrows and prepared to make my move.

Rule number one of performing an execution at point-blank range: never, _ever_ put the gun directly to your victim’s head because I guarantee that you cannot react as quickly as your target can move.

Case in point.

The gun smashed the center of my forehead when I reared up off the table. Pain lit across my skull and incinerated nerves that were already frayed. Stitches tore and my gashed forehead bled. Didn’t matter. I lashed out with my right palm, landing a blow that knocked the weapon clear out of the skinwalker’s hand, sent him reeling. Not for long, though. He bared his teeth with feral fury and hauled back to strike. The blow connected before I could raise an arm in defense.

“Agh!” I grunted. My neck snapped to the side; my brain slapped the walls inside my head and suddenly I wasn’t on the table anymore and the tiled floor leaped up to welcome my skull with a sickening _crack._ Stunned. Senses gone, replaced with a sterile blankness. Ears ringing. Head stinging…

_No, no, no, Dean. You can’t black out. Listen to me. You have to get up, you understand me?_

I wondered – Baby?

_Yeah, yeah, I’m still with you! Get up and make a break for it. Parking lot. All you have to do is get to the parking lot. I’ll take it from there!_

Now, where was my car? I had to get to my car…

_I told you – parking lot. I can’t help you while you’re still in the building Come on, get up! That ‘walker’s gonna find his gun sooner or later!_

I pushed myself up on trembling forearms, shook the fog out of my brain, and wondered where Sam was.

_I’ve got him covered! Get your ass in gear, driver, and RUN!_

I did.

My feet felt strange, like they were encased in concrete blocks, and my tunneling vision didn’t help. Somehow, I made it out into the hallway ahead of the pony and broke into a lopsided lope that took me through the sterile hallways at a slightly faster pace than a walk would have. My hand clipped a binder that some nurse was holding and sent it spinning, spitting papers and charts but hell I didn’t care because I had to _move._ I muttered something that could’ve translated to some sort of apology and dogged onwards. I didn’t notice I’d drifted off-course until my shoulder brushed the wall, which scared me enough to bring some clarity back to my muddled brain, and I shook myself out and kept going.

Footsteps. Heavy, running footsteps, right behind me.

 _Stairs, Dean!_ The Impala screamed in my head. _Left, left, LEFT!_

My palms met the door marked STAIRS, and I fell through it. Probably would’ve hit the ground, too, if someone huge hadn’t grabbed onto the back of my shirt. I was hauled backwards as my own collar dug into my throat, cutting off precious air. I kicked. I struggled. No punches – my hands were at my neck, prying at the taut fabric, but then my ass was on the ground and my back was against the wall, and the skinwalker had that gun ready to fill my head with lead –  

And then, suddenly, he wasn’t there anymore.

My brother broadsided the son of a bitch.

I scrambled to get back to my feet as the door latched shut, locking us all in the stairwell. Hollow, meaty _thuds_ echoed up into the spire as Sam landed punch after punch, driving the gray-haired skinwalker back further and further until he was perilously close to the edge of the stairs. Silver flashed in the light, and Sam struck out with his blade; a wet _snick_ sound and the skinwalker’s blood spattered over the concrete stairs.

He fell, howling and clutching his forearm.

“Let’s go.” Sam grabbed me by the wrist and leaped down the stairs two at a time. I ended up slipping and took most of them on my ass, but hey, I managed to get to the bottom without smacking my skull again, so I considered that a small victory and ran blindly when Sam pushed me out into the hallway on ground floor. I floundered for a minute like an idiot before he nudged me forward. “This way.”

Then we were outside the building and diving headfirst into the storm. Colorado apparently wasn’t done with her assault on the roads – the heavy white snow covered everything and drifted in huge, fat flakes from the dark clouds above. It was fucking freezing. Several steps into the snowy sidewalk, I resented the fact that my feet were only protected by thin socks. Where the hell were my boots?

“Guess you found the skinwalker.” Sam grunted as he caught me. (I tripped off the curb and almost went down to my knees in the parking lot.) He hauled me back onto the sidewalk, held me steady for a moment, glancing behind him like he expected to be shot.

“No. He found me.” Where the hell was the Impala? I couldn’t see a damn thing, not with the way the snow was coming down like this.

_What are you waiting for? There’s a killer pony on your ass, remember?!_

“You’re not supposed to have your phone,” Sam scolded, and satisfied that we weren’t going to be run down by wayward traffic, he jumped into the parking lot with me close behind.

I frowned and jogged after him with jagged steps. “What?”

“I had six missed calls from you,” he shouted back, skirting around the front bumper of a white Toyota that had appeared out of freakin’ nowhere and tried to kill us. “I figured something was wrong when I finally answered and heard… well, I didn’t hear anything.”

My hip thumped the headlight. The driver blared on the horn. “I never called you,” I spat, glancing back over my shoulder when I heard somebody shouting at us. I cussed and forced myself to run faster, though my feet were cold and wet and starting to go numb.

I hated snow.

“You didn’t?” Sam dropped back and fell into step beside me. For the first time, I noticed he had our battered duffel bag slung across his back. He’d been ready to get the hell out of Dodge.

“Left my phone in the car,” I wheezed.

_Next time, I’ll park closer, how about that?_

“So, what, the car called me?” Sam scoffed, but then he sobered up. A white-knuckled hand brandished the silver knife. His head was on a swivel. “No, wait. Don’t answer that.”

 _You’re good at this game,_ Baby said, and there she was, a dark blot of ink on the white backdrop of snow. I stumbled over to her, then realized my brother was no longer on my tail when I fell on the backseat door handle. Sam had stopped, and at first I thought he was trying to fend off the skinwalker, but then I saw that he was just standing there with his eyes wide and his jaw clenched.

_Let’s go, shall we?_

The Impala’s motor was already running, and her headlights carved through the storm. There was a nice pile of snow all around her where she’d apparently shaken all the loose flakes off, and her wipers ticked nervously back and forth across her windshield as she worked to clear it. Smoke billowed from her exhaust.

“What the hell is this, Dean?” Sam’s eyes narrowed at the thrumming Impala, suspicion darkening his expression.

_I’m gonna regret this, aren’t I?_

“No time!” I slapped a palm on the roof as I ducked into the car. “We gotta move, Sammy!”

“No fucking way,” my brother muttered. At least, that’s what I heard. Sam almost never cussed, not like that. Not unless he was really at his wit’s end.

“Get in the car!” I screamed. Something clicked then and Sam unrooted himself from the ground. His face was pale, his eyes wide, and he tossed the bag onto the floorboards and slammed the door behind him. He flexed his hands on the wheel, staring around the cab like he’d find something. Some spirit waiting to be vanquished.

The car sighed around us, her body clicking and popping as she blew air through her exhaust. _Yep. I’m gonna regret this._ She revved her engine once, twice, rattling her suspension with sheer power as the sound cut through the silence of the storm. _Hi there, Sam._

“She says hi,” I echoed. Sam whipped around and stared at me like _I_ was the ghost.

 _Moving on,_ Baby said, and dropped herself into Drive. The transmission clunked into gear. Tires spun uselessly through the snow for a brief moment, RPMs spiking, then bit when she found traction, and my brother watched in absolute horror as the steering wheel slipped through his hands without his input.

“By the way,” I added, pressing a hand to my bleeding forehead with a sly grin. “She’s gonna drive this time.”


	7. Chapter 7

My poor little brother was completely and idiotically dumbstruck.

Don’t get me wrong – I actually welcomed the silence. Meant I had at least a little while to collect myself before he started grilling me about the Impala. I really wasn’t looking forward to that, because let’s be real: I didn’t have answers for him. Hell, I probably had the exact same questions that he did!

_Dean, you look like crap._

“Wow. Thanks.” I grimaced when I tried to remove my bandage and started taking the broken stitches with it. It really wouldn’t have surprised me if my brain had sprung a leak somewhere and was filling up my dome with blood, and in an offhand sort of way I wondered if maybe that’s why my forehead was bleeding so badly. I was leaning heavily against the Impala’s freezing window, so I peeled myself away from it, frowned, and tried to palm the smeared bloodstain off the glass. (All I did was make it worse.)

_I don’t expect any man who got his ass kicked by a ‘walker to look good,_ the Impala responded matter-of-factly. I scowled at her dashboard.

My brother finally decided to snap out of his trance.

First, his eyes fell to the Impala’s steering wheel, and he watched detachedly as the Chevy spun it to the left to ease through a snowy turn. I felt her back end start to drift, the chains wrapped around her rear tires rattling angrily, but with a quick snap of the steering back to straight, she righted herself and resumed the gentle ride. Sam blinked like he didn’t quite believe what he was seeing.

 Then he saw me in the rearview mirror.

_Oh, here we go. Activate mommy mode. You’re in for it, Dean._

“Shut up,” I growled through the side of my mouth.

“Hey, hey, hey.” Sam twisted around in the seat and thumped his hand against my wrist, forcing me to drop my arm away from my gashed head. “Don’t touch that. Here.” He produced a pack of (probably stolen) gauze pads from our duffel bag, pulled a clean one out, and shoved it into my fist. “Put pressure on it.”

“Yes, sir,” I muttered, and flinched when I pressed the gauze to my head – it _hurt._ My brother dug around in the bag and pulled out a roll of that self-adhering bandage stuff. “Hold still,” he commanded. I was too weak to resist, so I just sort of growled when he started wrapping it around my head to hold the gauze in place.

“What happened back there?” he questioned.

Dizziness had me swaying, so I grabbed the Impala’s door panel to anchor myself. “Dunno. Skinwalker showed up, tied me down, put a gun in my face, so I head-butted it and turned tail.” I winced when Sam pressed down on the new bandage to secure it. “That’s when you showed up.”

“Hmm.” Sam hummed in his throat and busied himself zipping the bag shut.

He kept his mouth shut for a while after that. I listened to my Chevy’s motor humming in the background: the easy rise and fall of her RPMs as she worked the gas and brake in rhythm to keep her tires from locking up. Though I wasn’t driving, I could tell the roads were shitty with ice and snow. But Baby? She handled it like it was nothing. At one point she swung wide into the opposite lane to surge past a brand-new Jeep slugging along through the slush.

I slumped over, causing Sam to jump when my skull thumped the window.

_Oh, crap. You okay back there, driver?_

Did I even need to answer? I had a feeling that she knew. Now that the adrenaline was wearing off and the pain starting to take hold, I knew I was in bad shape. The light stabbed my eyes. My head hurt like hell. I must’ve twisted my ankle in my mad dash through the hospital because it throbbed like there was a piece of steel shoved into the joint. Come to think of it, my whole body hurt, probably because, you know, I’d fallen off a table onto solid tile flooring. Maybe I’d broken something important.  

If not for the skinwalker, I might have actually asked to be brought back to the ER.

But that wasn’t an option, so I kicked my feet up onto the seat, fidgeted until I found a comfortable position, and closed my eyes.

I was just starting to doze off when Sam’s voice busted the silence. “What’s going on here, Dean?”

Let me sleep, I thought grumpily as I blinked the heaviness out of my eyes. Sam was facing forward with his hands working uneasily in his lap like he wasn’t sure what to do with them. (Can’t say I blamed him – what the hell _are_ you supposed to do with your hands when you’re sitting in the driver’s seat of a car that’s controlling itself?) He’d scooted over so he was sitting more towards the middle of the bench, and I noticed he’d angled the rearview mirror so he could see me in it. He was worried, that much was obvious. He was white as a ghost with dark half-circles rimming his hard eyes.

_Ohh boy. Here we go._

Dragging in a breath, I decided to tell him the truth: “I don’t know.”

He pursed his lips and looked out the window. The Impala’s speed fell off as she pulled up to a stoplight. The blinker stalk clicked into place on its own, and she idled rough in anticipation.

“So you hit your head,” Sam went on, “and suddenly the car’s alive.”

_Not quite._

“She and I have talked,” I said, earning a roll of the eyes from my brother. I ignored him. “We’ve decided that when the skinwalker pinned my head to her door, something got knocked into place.” I thrust an index finger at my bandaged skull. “Like an unplugged cable found its socket. When it got plugged in, a link was established, and now I can hear her. Right, Baby?”

_You got any better ideas?_

“She talks to you in your head, telepathically.” Sam frowned and got that look on his face he always got when he was concentrating hard. (I thought it made him look constipated, but now wasn’t the time to remind him of that.) “So… does she speak, like, English? Or some strange car language?”

_Seriously? What do you take me for? A Model T? I’m not primitive!_

“English,” I responded, mouth twisting with a silent snicker. “She sounds hot.”

_Aww, you think I sound like a sexy lady. I’m so flattered!_  Only mild sarcasm.

“Right,” Sam said, taking a handful of hair and tugging at his scalp.

_He still wants to take you to the looney bin._ The Impala joined the slow flow of traffic on the highway. Brake lights. Brake lights everywhere. Guess the snowplows were having a hard time keeping up with this storm.

“It’s your fault,” I mumbled, and rested my cheek on the cool leather seat back. I folded my arms over my chest and settled in. It was gonna be a long drive. Ah, well. At least Baby was keeping it warm in here.

“So all those phone calls I got earlier.” Sam frowned again and caught my gaze in the mirror. “That really was the car, wasn’t it?”

“Dunno. Was it you, Baby?” I repositioned myself, working my shoulders down so I could kick my feet up on the opposite door panel. Sam had draped my jacket over the back of the seat; I snagged it and slung it over my chest like a blanket. The heater was cranked all the way up, but I couldn’t help but shiver, even underneath the heavy fabric.

_What do you think? I couldn’t just sit back and let the ‘walker tear you apart, and, well, a phone call was the only way I could think to get a hold of Sam for you. Reckoned he’d come running – do I know your brother, or what?_ The Chevy’s engine quieted, then revved up as she got back on the accelerator. _God, Dean. If you hadn’t left that phone with me…_

I nodded to that and raised both eyebrows at Sam in the rearview.

He sighed and scrubbed a hand over his face. “Dean, I can’t hear her. If she’s saying something, you’ve gotta translate for me.”

Ah. Yeah. That made sense. “I left my phone in the glove box. She used it.” Exhaustion set it, and I sank lower into the seat.

Sam nervously tapped a hand on the dashboard, shaking his head back and forth, back and forth, started jiggling his foot against the floorboards. “I’m sorry. I’m just having a hard time with this. If the Impala’s been sentient all this time, why wait until _now_ to reveal it?”

Honestly, I wasn’t sure how to respond to that, and I didn’t feel like keeping this conversation up. I turned my face away from my brother, tucking it against the seat, breathing in the familiar scent of aging leather, lulled by the rumble of the Impala’s motor. Why had she waited? I understood that she was afraid of my younger brother, but I couldn’t help feeling a little hurt – my own car didn’t trust me?

_No, driver. That’s… that’s not it. At all. I – we’ll talk later. Okay?_

“Dean?”

I could literally feel myself slipping off the ledge, my handhold on awareness slowly diminishing. This was getting old. “I’m tired, Sam,” I slurred, tripping over the words.

His face softened, and thankfully, he got the message and dropped the discussion. “I know you are,” he said quietly. “Try and get some rest.”

I was too far gone to respond.


	8. Chapter 8

First thing I noticed when I woke up was my brother’s yelling. I mean, I guess he wasn’t _really_ yelling, but he was definitely pissed off. Couldn’t make out what he was saying, but I could tell it wasn’t directed at me, so I decided I didn’t really care and let my cheek thump against the Impala’s warm leather seat. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been so damn tired. I felt drunk. (Not the fun kind of drunk. The tired kind of drunk, and the worst part was that whiskey hadn’t even been involved!)

Then I realized that Sam wasn’t yelling, he was arguing. With my car.

“This is ridiculous!”

_Think I care? You’re not going anywhere until I know you understand me, Sam Winchester!_

“What the – will you _just_ let me go—“

_Not gonna happen!_

“What do you want from me?!”

_I can’t – my God, you’re an absolute dumbass. I can’t make this_ any _clearer, Sam!_

Sam hauled back, snarled something unintelligible, and slapped a palm down on the steel dashboard with a stinging _crack._ “God _dammit,_ car! I don’t know what you’re trying to say to me!”

“Hey! That’s enough!” I snapped into a sitting position. Bad idea. _Bad_ idea. I grimaced and pushed a hand to my throbbing, spinning head, tried to shake it off, made it worse, gritted my teeth, and waited for it to pass. It didn’t. I ignored it. “Both of you. Back off.”

_Hah!_ The Impala scoffed. _Tell that to him, would you?_

Sam pursed his lips and threw his arms down into the seat. “Your car won’t let me open the freakin’ door!”

“Well, you pissed her off.” I folded my arms, rested my chin on them, and stared at the car’s dash. She simmered with rage. I could feel it. Hear it, even, in the breakneck tempo of her idling motor.

“Yeah. I got that.” Sam rolled his eyes. “What the hell did I do?”

  _Tell him next time he touches my steering wheel while I’m trying to drive, I won’t feel bad if his pretty face ends up in my gage cluster._

I whistled low. “That’s just mean, Baby.”

_Punishment fits the crime,_ she replied simply.

“What? What did she say?” Sam’s eyes were narrowed, eyebrows rolled low.

“She’s a car, Sam.” I slipped a thumb underneath the edge of the bandage on my forehead. Dried blood flaked into my hand. “She doesn’t need you to drive.”

My younger brother sighed heavily in his throat, rubbed his forehead with a thumb and forefinger. “That’s what made her mad? I only tried to steer once!”

_Oh, shut up, you did more than that. Almost put me in a ditch again!_ Her exhaust thrummed.

“Apologize to her.” I settled down to wait.

Baby revved her motor, and I realized we were parked, because the shadows inside the cab weren’t moving, and, well, there was a wall right in front of us. Artificial orange light filtered through the windows, the smell of dusty concrete and exhaust heavy in the air. A parking garage. There was a brightly colored piece of paper hanging off the rearview mirror – a parking pass? What for?

“Apologize to the car?” Sam raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah.” I blinked at him. Waited some more. In the back of my mind, the Impala snickered.

Sam looked upwards, blew air through his lips, dropped his head, lifted both hands in a gesture of defeat, and said in a flat tone, “I’m sorry.”

_Hmm. Seems sincere enough._ Baby cut her engine and popped her locks open. _Not kidding about bashing your face in, though. Don’t try me._  

“Thank you,” Sam said through clenched teeth, slipped out the door and shut it. Gently. I could tell he was wary of my Chevy now. Great. I had a bad feeling about that. Meant he was scared of her. Bad things happened when Sam got scared of something.

_Yep. Oh well. Shit happens._ Baby grumbled. I kept scratching at my forehead. It burned like hell, the ache branching all the way down to the space between my eyebrows to the crest of my hairline. No, scratch that. My whole head hurt and vibrated like a struck bell. Not to mention my neck. I closed my eyes, just for a second, wanting rest and suddenly not wanting to move. Perfectly comfortable where I was. Perfectly comfortable…

“You know,” I mumbled against the car’s seat, “you should learn Morse code. Then you could talk to Sammy and you two wouldn’t wake me up with your bitching again.”

_Yeah, I’ll take it into consideration._ The machine was obviously distracted. _You’re not doing so hot, are you, Dean?_

I smiled humorlessly as Sam slammed the trunk shut and descended on my door. “You okay, man?” he echoed, and I felt his shadow fall across me as he reached into the backseat.

“Yeah, yeah.” I waved him off. “Fine.”

_Oh, come on, Dean. Even you don’t believe that._

“No, you’re not,” Sam grunted as he hoisted me out of the car. Huh. I was wearing boots. Couldn’t remember putting those on. I swayed on my feet, barely caught myself on the Impala’s open door. My brother stepped in to keep me from going to my knees in the dirty garage. “Hey, hey. Easy there, Dean. Our room’s not too far.”

“Room?” I let my head roll back, drowning my eyes in strange artificial light. “Where are we?”

_They closed the highways both directions due to weather,_ Baby supplied. _We’re trapped. Sam wasn’t feeling up to sleeping on the road, I guess._

“I don’t know, exactly.” Sam’s response rode the tail end of Baby’s. “Some ski resort. Only place with a parking garage and rooms open.” He easily supported my weight, and I saw that he had two bags slung from his shoulder: mine and his, the ones we always kept packed up for this sort of thing. “The second they open the freeway again, we’re hitting the road.”

_Got a full tank of gas and ready to roll._

“Whoa. No.” I hung back and dug my heels in, reluctant to leave the Impala. Sam cocked his head at me, both eyebrows raised in question. I went on. “What about the skinwalker?”

He shrugged. “What about it?”

I stared at him, dumbfounded, but then I got pissed. “We’re finishing this, Sammy!” I exclaimed. “No way in hell are we walking away from this hunt – not now! I want to see this through until that goddamn horse is dog meat!”  

He had a hand up, shaking his head slowly, and that pissed me off even more. “There’s no ‘we’, Dean,” he said calmly. “I’m going in alone.”

“What?!”

“Face it. You’re in no shape to fight,” he said, and spurred me with a light touch at the center of my upper back. We started to limp forwards. Baby shut her door and slapped her locks down, but left her lights on. Nice of her. Parking garage lighting isn’t always the best. Then I remembered I was pissed at Sam, so I snarled and shook him off best I could, grabbing him by the wrist and wrenching him away from me with a dark expression. God, did I mention my head hurt? I stumbled a few steps. Caught myself before Sam could step in again.

“I can fight,” I said, but it sounded weak, even to me.

“I’m not gonna let you. I hate to say it, but you get hit in the head one more time like that and you’re _done_.” He locked me in a sideways glance and carried on before I could get a word in edgewise. “Either you’ll die or get brain damage, Dean, and I can’t decide what’s worse.”

That shut me up. I think. Maybe I finally realized I wasn’t gonna win this battle. Not now, anyway. I’d try again later when I was rested up some and Sam was calmed down. Yeah. That’s what I’d do. I sagged into Sam’s shoulder without meaning too, but was too tired, too wounded to pull away, and I knew it.

“I’m sorry,” he told me, “but I have to assume the worst here.”

_Isn’t that what you always do?_ Baby words were dark. Almost as dark as the parking garage when she killed her lights.

* * *

I didn’t remember Sam stitching me back together or wrapping my whole head in fresh bandages. I didn’t remember stripping down to my underwear, leaving my dirty and bloody clothes in a heap on the floor next to the bed, and I didn’t remember actually getting _into_ the bed. Hell, I didn’t remember how we got here, or where ‘here’ was.

Ah. Right. Ski resort. Nice place. Maybe a little too extreme with the mountain cabin theme, but I’d take it over those sketchy roadside motels any day. Groaning in my throat, I wrenched myself into a sitting position and fought back a yawn. “Sammy?” I called, digging my palms against my eyes and rubbing at them to clear my vision. “You awake?”

Silence.

“Sam?” I blinked and turned my head. It was dark, save the soft light leaking in from the hallway underneath the door. I couldn’t see a damn thing. I reached out, probing the bedside table for a lamp or something, found it, braced myself, and flicked it on.

The room was empty. 

There was only one bed, and I was in it. Obviously, my brother had sprawled out on the couch – the cushions were mashed down and the pillows stuffed up against one arm to serve as a backrest. His laptop sat open on the expensive-looking wooden coffee table in the middle of the room, its low-battery indicator light blipping furiously, begging someone to plug it in before its power gave out. There was a notebook on the floor, covered in his scrawl, and his duffel lay open next to it. He couldn’t have left too long ago. The coffee maker was still on and an empty mug sat on the counter next to the sink in the kitchenette.

I debated going back to sleep for a little bit, but something was nagging me.

“Aw, hell.” Ignoring the vertigo plaguing my head, I swung my legs off the bed and fell on my own bag, which had been dumped unceremoniously against the wall. The first thing I found was a button-down flannel. I threw it on and started digging around for some pants. There we go. Found an old pair of black sweats. Much better than denim.

Somehow, I dragged myself over to the couch and perched on it, one leg tucked under the other. I felt like shit. The drugs they’d pumped into me at the hospital were probably all wearing off now. Wonderful. Guess it was time to figure out how damaged I actually was. Sam’s computer hummed away. Figured I should turn it off – otherwise that annoying light was just gonna keep me awake. I flicked a finger across the touchpad.

Dad’s journal sat just to the side of it.

That wasn’t strange. Er, shouldn’t have been. Sam would definitely turn to my father’s notes in his research on the skinwalker, which was fine. Except I knew that notebook by heart. It seemed he’d shut the cover and accidentally trapped the leather clasp between the pages, and I knew for a fact that the ‘bookmark’ was nowhere near the section about skinwalkers.

Slowly, I flipped it open to the marked page. Across the top, above the jagged cursive and the sketched diagrams, the title, all capital letters and underlined: _POSSESSED/AUTONOMOUS MACHINES._

My breath caught.

The computer’s screen flicked on, and the shifting light caught my attention, tore me away from Dad’s journal. Sam hadn’t locked it. He had an article pulled up. I was starting to shake but managed to scroll to the top. In the corner, the battery icon flashed. Didn’t matter.

Long, wordy threads; short responses. A forum, one of those conspiracy websites. I flipped through the posts and saw pictures of cars: scans of black-and-white photos, cars from the ’20s, ‘50s, modern day, everything in between; semis, muscle cars, a newer NASCAR racecar with the number 88 blazed on its sides. It hurt my head too much to read the captions. I scrolled to the top and squinted and picked out the forum’s name.

_SPEED DEMONS: SHARE YOUR TALES OF LIVING CARS._

“Shit,” I spat, because I knew what this meant. “Baby? Baby, talk to me. Is Sam with you?”

Silence.

“No. No no no no.” I slapped the computer shut, knocked Dad’s journal to the side when I saw circles drawn in new ink, scribbling in the margins. Sam’s handwriting. The words spiraled on the page. My stomach lurched. I tried to read anyway.

The word _KILL_ was underlined. Circled. Annotated. All by my brother.

I made a break for the garage.


	9. Chapter 9

****

Sam could’ve been uttering some sort of exorcism over my car, or he could’ve been cussing the poor machine up and down. Honestly, the latter option didn’t cross my mind when I burst into the parking garage and saw him bent over the Impala’s motor. All I really noticed was the holy water he had in one hand and the oily rag in the other.

Oh, he was gonna get it.

First thing I did when I reached Sam was slap the glass vial outta his hand. It shattered on the concrete somewhere behind. I went for his back, took a handful of shirt between his shoulder blades, and threw all my weight into dragging his sorry ass to the ground with me. But Sam, being the quick bastard he was, whipped around and cracked a fist square across my cheek.

I went down. Hard.

“Oh, shit! Dean!” Busted glass powdered under his heel as he reached out a hand to catch me by the arm. Smears of light spilled across my blurred vision as I tried to drag him into focus. He had both hands on my shoulders, pinning me in an upright position against the Impala’s door as I threatened to tip over onto the dirty concrete, and then he shouted into my face. “Talk to me! You okay?”

“No.” I’d bitten my tongue. I spat blood to the side.

Seriously, you’d think I’d at least get an apology after that one, but not so. My sight finally snapped straight. I watched Sam’s expression darken, and instead of ‘I’m sorry’, I got a frustrated, “What the hell were you thinking? I could’ve killed you, Dean!”

“Would’ve done me a favor!” I snapped back at him.

“Oh, shut it.” Sam sneered with bared teeth and backed up, grinding more glass into the concrete. He looked at the spilled holy water, then back to me, and when he saw my snarl he immediately backpedaled. “Dean, this isn’t what you think it is!”

“Then what is it?” My response was automatic – I wasn’t really listening. I was trying damn hard to get my Baby to talk to me, because the radio silence was making me more anxious with every passing second. “Come on,” I whispered under my breath, sliding a palm against the salt- and mud-streaked machine, tracing the familiar cure of the fender flare, mentally cataloging every miniscule chip and scratch in the chrome trim. “Baby. Come on.”

Sam was dead silent. And I was pissed. There was a hole in my mind that Baby’s presence should’ve filled, and distress set in when I realized I couldn’t get through to her. Maybe it was the concussion, or the aftereffects of painkillers, or maybe I needed another dose, but I blamed my brother. Before he had a chance to slink away, I lashed out and latched onto his undershirt. He cussed as the collar tore.

“What did you do to her?” My voice was dark as the Chevy’s paint.

Sam’s mouth formed my name, but like I said, I was _pissed._ His words faded to a wince when I gave a violent twist and tightened the shredded collar against his throat. He backed off to get some slack, put a hand to my wrist, pushed on me gently, and said, “Dean, I didn’t—“

“What. Did. You. Do. To. _Her._ ” Each word punctuated with a sharp exhale. My blood was up. But I was weak, and I was injured, and Sam easily shoved me away and sidled out of reach of the arm I threw out to catch him again. I was about to shove off of the Impala to tackle him to the dirty concrete, hell-bent on the idea of beating his ass until he regretted killing the poor defenseless Chevrolet, see how _he_ liked it –

A familiar voice stalled me before I could try.

_Dean. Dean! I’m not dead! You really think I’d let him do any real damage? Hah!_

Tension leaked out of my muscles. I sagged against my machine’s door again, relief a warm release in my veins. “Baby?”

_Right here._ The Impala’s side markers pulsed with soft light. I blew through my lips, pretended Sam wasn’t staring at me with his arms folded, and flattened a palm against the dusty fender.

“Baby,” I murmured, pressing a cheek against the cool metal. “Did he hurt you?”

_Nah. Not really. But believe me, he tried._

“Dean, let me explain—“

I threw out an index finger to silence my brother. He rolled his eyes and turned the other way, shaking his head. Whatever. He didn’t matter now. I thumbed at a stubborn patch of salty mud on the Impala’s dark paint. “What’s the damage?”

_There’s holy water in my radiator, salt all over my frame rail, and he got crafty with that silver blade. Other than the gouged paint, I’m fine. Pissed as hell, but fine._

I found the wound just as she spoke: a two-inch gash arcing above the chrome trim on her fender flare. “Damn it,” I growled as my finger passed over the glint of bare metal. My anger built. The parking garage’s floor suddenly seemed too slanted, the ceiling too low, walls to close. I shook it off and glared under my eyebrows up at my brother. “You’re fucking kidding me with this, Sam!”

“I had to be sure,” he stated simply.

“Of _what_?”

_Dean, try not to get so worked up. Not good for the head._

“He wants you dead, Baby!” I snapped at the car, then drove my fury back to my brother. “She’s not a demon or a ghost and – a _silver blade,_ Sammy? You ever heard of a shapeshifting car?!”

“No,” Sam admitted, and he was kneeling next to me, peering into my eyes with the scrutiny a scientist might have for a goddamned lab rat. “But I’ve never heard of a sentient car that wasn’t possessed, either.”

_Think I might know if I was possessed,_ my Chevy countered innocently.

The bandage bound around my skull suddenly felt too tight like it was made of solid steel. Or maybe it had always been that uncomfortable and I was just now noticing it. Every time my pulse pounded in my temple, it got worse, and worse, and – shit, was I really hurt this bad? I’d been awake for less than ten minutes and my mind was already threatening to crap out on me again. I fought it off and surfaced roughly. Had to finish this battle with Sam. Couldn’t give him the satisfaction of winning by default. “She don’t wanna hurt us,” I said, but the words sort of slipped off my tongue. “If she did, we’d be dead by now.”

_Hey, hey, now. Easy there, Dean._ Thank God that Impala was close enough to lean into me, because if she hadn’t been there, I would’ve probably cracked my head open on the concrete when I tried to rise. My backside thudded against her door as her chassis creaked with the effort it took to keep me upright. Sam followed shortly, but I shrugged him off, clenched my jaw, and tried to force clarity back into my injured brain.

_Don’t like you on your feet,_ said the Chevrolet. _Longer you stay standing, more chance you got of falling._

Great. Now she thought I was weak, too. I ignored her. I wasn’t done here. “Sam,” I said, glaring at my brother, “why’d’ya want to kill her?”

“I don’t,” he responded.

“Then why’d you have it all circled in Dad’s book?”

Sam shrugged, that aggravating half-shrug he always put on when he knew he was in trouble but didn’t want to admit to what he’d done. Seeing his shoulders tilt like that sent a bolt of rage through me, because I knew just how he was gonna respond, and I didn’t like it.

“Better to learn how to kill something before you need to know.” He shrugged like it was no big deal.

_See? What did I tell you? This is exactly why I never revealed myself._ Baby simmered with quiet irritation – I could feel it like heat coming off her big metal body. My spine slid over glass and metal and I threw a knee out to brace myself against the concrete so I wouldn’t get dust all over my ass again. (Not that it mattered. My sweatpants were already whited out with the crap.) I sighed heavily as Sam hovered close by like he wasn’t sure whether to catch me or just let me fall. I showed him my back and flattened a palm over the gouged paint on the fender.

You really wanna piss me off? Fuck up my car’s paint job.

“Well? Was it worth it?” I snarled. I was starting to feel weak again. Tired. Seriously, this was getting old. I’d been knocked in the head dozens of times in the past and suffered less. Maybe a headache for a couple hours, but this was ridiculous. It was like that damn horse had knocked the consciousness right outta me and told it to hit the road.

For the first time during this whole deal, I actually started to worry about myself.

“Worth it?” Sam raised an eyebrow.

I’m sure we were a hell of a sight at the moment – me kneeling down, pressed against the Impala looking like Death with a bandaged crown; Sam shifting his weight from one foot to another,  face twisted like he couldn’t decide whether to shoot me or make a break for it; and my big Chevy leaning as far to the left as her chassis would allow to keep me from sliding to the ground. Probably why a group of people toting skis and helmets rubbernecked at us as they strode by. Whatever. That was their problem. I felt like telling them to shove off and mind their own business, but they hustled out of earshot before I could find the breath.

“Worth it, meaning: did you figure it out?” I threw a sidelong glance at Sam. “Do you know what she is and how to rip the life outta her in case she goes dark side on us?”

My brother’s shoulders stiffened at the thinly veiled attack, but with a violent jerk he shook the snarl off his face and looked up to the low-hanging concrete ceiling. I choked a bit as an older Chrysler rumbled past, spitting burnt-oil smoke out the tailpipe. _Poor bastard,_ the Impala sympathized, mostly to herself.

I couldn’t exactly hear what Sam was saying over the sound of the ailing Chrysler’s rough idle, but I thought he said “no”.

_Put that car out of its misery._ Baby shuddered.

“No?” I raised both eyebrows.

Sam sighed, “I have no clue. None.”

The Chrysler’s motor chugged and died under its driver’s hand. My breathing sounded suddenly harsh in the silence. I leveled Sam with a hard glare under my eyebrows, frowned deeply, stayed silent, and waited.

After staring me down for a minute, he continued. “I tried everything I know to do about a possessed machine.” Shrugged. “Nothing. Not so much as a flinch. No reaction to holy water, salt, iron, or… well, she slammed my hand in the door after I got her with the silver knife, but I think that was just because I made her mad.” He scrubbed a palm over his knuckles, wincing, and I saw the skin was raw with fresh bruising.

_Ahh, so he CAN take a hint!_

“I’m starting to think that the Impala may not be possessed...”

_No shit, Sherlock._

“…But that’s all I got. Nothing in Dad’s journal comes close to this and I haven’t seen anything in our library. There _were_ a few websites about living cars…” Sam waved a hand in the air, voice dripping sarcasm. “And we all know that just ‘cause it’s on the Internet, it’s gotta be true.”

_On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a vintage muscle car._

“Did you ever think about, I don’t know, maybe _asking_ her? C’mon, Sam. You’re usually the one for diplomatic solutions.” My frown deepened, and I didn’t even wait for a response from my brother. “Baby?”

She snapped to attention. _Mhmm?_

“What the hell are you?”

_I just said it. I’m a vintage muscle car._

“So… you’re just a car. Nothing else.”

_Nope. Far as I know, anyway._

In my silence, Sam started to pace. “Dean. I can’t hear what she’s saying!”

“Shut up.” I waved him off. “So you’re not a ghost, or a demon, or shapeshifter, or… whatever?”

_Nope,_ she said quickly – a little _too_ quickly. She changed the subject real quick, too, which made me even more suspicious. _Look, Dean. I know you’re worked up about me, but you need to take care of yourself. I’m worried about you._

“Don’t be.” I threw one leg out, then the other, and leaned heavily on the Impala’s fender as I stood. Great. Vertigo came rushing back and threw the garage into a spiral. I stumbled, felt suddenly exposed when I fell away from the Impala and crashed into Sam. He grunted and planted both feet firmly to keep us both from toppling over, heel slipping in the spilled holy water.

“Easy, Dean.” He moved to support me. “That’s it. We’re going back to the room.”

I growled at Sam and looked to the Impala. She sighed, and I saw her suspension sag forward, front bumper barely kissing the parking barrier. _I’ll make you a deal,_ she said to me. _You get your ass to bed and I’ll tell you everything I know about myself. I don’t know much, admittedly, but I’m not saying a damn thing ‘til you’re tucked away. Got me?_

I glared at her.

_Take it or leave it. Your choice._

Oh, so now she was trying to bribe me?

Well, it worked, because I gave up with a resigned “fine” and let Sam drive me away from my car. My mind was whirling (and not just because of the vertigo). I dreaded what she was gonna tell me. What if she was something evil? Something that _should_ be killed? The thought made me sick. That Impala was one of the few things of mine I actually took pride in, and I couldn’t justify doing _anything_ like that to her.

That was when I made up my mind: Sam couldn’t be the one to gank her.

If the Impala had to die, I would be the one with the weapon in my hands.


	10. Chapter 10

**CHAPTER TEN**

_It was always you, Dean. Knew it right from the moment you woke me up that first time._

“No good conversation ever starts with that, Baby.” I almost fell face-first off the edge of the bed as I plunked my head into my hands and rubbed vigorously. To say I was going a little bit stir-crazy was a bit of an understatement. I was about to lose it, man. My hands twitched with the urge to do _something_.

“If you touch those stitches one more time, I’m duct taping your arms together.” Sam didn’t even look up. His face was pretty much buried in his computer, leaning with his back against the armrest, legs kicked up on the couch, almost collapsed into himself with his shoulders hunched up like that. Honestly, I had no idea that I was even touching my damaged head, and I took my hand away with a slightly confused expression and stared at the flakes of dried blood crusted under my nails. Huh. Guess I had been picking at it.

_I just knew,_ the Impala went on in her strange little corner of my brain. _It couldn’t have been anybody else. Not ever._

“What are you on about?” With a grunt, I shoved off the bed and got shakily to my feet. Sam twisted around, probably thinking he could catch me if I started to fall so I wouldn’t end up on my ass, but to jump to my aid would mean dumping his laptop and Dad’s journal to the floor, neither of which were things he wanted to do.

Wait. Dad’s journal?

The worn leather notebook lay open, corners drooping off the edge of Sam’s keyboard. Thought he could fool me into thinking he was on his laptop, eh? I peered over his shoulder. “What’re you looking for, Sammy?”

He startled and slapped a hand over the page he was skimming. “Skinwalker,” he said quickly. Too quickly. “Gotta make sure we’re ready to put him down for good.”

“Bullshit! You still wanna kill my damn car!” I lunged at the edge of Dad’s book, aiming to yank it off the keyboard and snatch it away from my idiot brother, but either I wasn’t thinking as fast as I thought I was or Sam was real good at predicting me because he easily shouldered my outstretched arm outta the way. My equilibrium was already jacked up, but the blow put me over the edge. My shins banged against the coffee table and I would’ve ended up face-first on top of it if Sam hadn’t hauled back on my wrist. Angrily, I shook off his grip and tried to remember why I’d gotten up off the bed in the first place.

_Sit,_ Baby commanded. I did.

“Hey!” Sam grunted and thrashed his legs out from under me.

_Not on your brother, dumbass!_  

“Sorry.” (I wasn’t.)

“What the hell was that for?”

“You’re being a dick!”

“I’m not being – forget it. Dean, just go to bed!”

 “No.” I folded my arms. “Second I’m out, you go back to trying to kill Baby. I’m not letting you do that.”

_I can take care of myself, driver._

“Not the point.” Too much input! Starting to get overwhelmed again. I grimaced and rubbed at my temples.

Sam watched me over the top of his computer, eyes sharp with concern. “Do you need something?”

“No,” I said firmly, but he was unfolding himself from the couch anyway. The computer and Dad’s journal were carefully placed on the coffee table and then he was on the ground searching through our bag of medical supplies.

“I’m sorry, Dean,” he told me, and I knew he meant it. “I know you think I’m being paranoid, but we can’t afford to _not_ be paranoid. You of all people should understand that there’s no such thing as being too careful when it comes to crap like this!” 

_If my mission were to kill you,_ the Impala said simply, _you’d both be crushed corpses in a ditch by now, don’t you think?_

I wasn’t sure whether to be comforted or disturbed by her words, but my head hurt too damn much to think on it too hard.

_Don’t worry. My mission is quite the opposite,_ she went on. _I was sent to protect you._

“Sent? Sent by who?” I frowned, scratched at my unshaven cheek for a second. Sam’s spine was facing me again, but I saw the back of his head shift in interest.

_Never really thought about it. Some higher power, I guess, but that’s all I got. All I know is that I woke up because you needed me to._

I gave a _humph_ in my throat and turned her words over in my brain. “You woke up? What does that mean?”

Sam flicked an ear towards me. I pretended he wasn’t there. 

_One day, you turned the key and BAM. Just like that, man, I woke up. I mean, I was aware before that, like I knew what was going on, but I couldn’t… I couldn’t do anything about it, you know? And then after that, I was able to act on my own, do what I want, but I always had one mission: keep you safe._

“Here.” Sam was beside me, shoving a couple of pills into my palm. “Take these.”

For all I knew, he could be poisoning me, but I was getting real sick of the pounding headache and the sensitivity to every light, shadow, sound. I tossed them back and swallowed them dry, then sat back and waited for them to take effect. Sam took his place on the couch beside me again, watching me carefully as he dragged his laptop back across his thighs, Dad’s notebook balanced atop it.

_You probably don’t remember it, or maybe you do. The first time you drove all by yourself. That’s when I woke up._

I knew Sam was still eavesdropping on my half of the conversation, but he’d buried himself back in the yellowing pages of Dad’s book, so I acted like he wasn’t sitting there. “I do,” I rasped. “I actually do. I had to have been, what, nine years old?”

_Give or take._

“I remember it because Dad gave me a nice ass-whooping when he finally tracked me down.” I took one fist in the other and rubbed a hand across my knuckles. “Told me never to take you out again without his explicit permission. But he didn’t know… he didn’t know I ran off with you to save Sammy.” Was I even making sense? I hoped so, but I sensed that the words I had in my head were different from the words I was actually able to sound out. Can’t say I really cared. I was just starting to feel pretty good.

Painkillers. Damn, those things work fast sometimes.

Sam looked up over the top of his laptop and tilted his head.

_You got it. It was you Winchesters against a pack of – hell, I think it was vamps. Something like that, anyway. Your daddy left you with me. Told you to stay put, lie low, keep the doors locked, and don’t touch anything while he went and sliced ‘em. Problem was, a few came after you and Sammy, and what did you do?_

I racked my brain. “I ran.”

_Yeah. John kept a spare key in my air box under the hood. You got your hands on it just as the vamps were on us. You could barely get it into the ignition, you were shaking so bad._

“I… I gouged up the dashboard,” I said as the gaps in the story started to slowly fill in, because damn it, I remembered. “Caught hell from Dad for that one.”

_And for taking his car out without permission,_ Baby responded. _But he didn’t know that you technically didn’t drive. That was all me, man. See, the thing is, when you got the key into the ignition and told Sammy to lie low in the backseat, you got on the gas pedal but failed to put the shifter into Reverse, and that vamp was coming fast, so I just… I don’t know. It was like I knew exactly what I had to do. I had to keep you safe, so I dropped the shifter down to help you._

“That was it?” The memory played back like I was watching found footage on a phone or something: Me, desperately jamming my foot up against the accelerator, wondering why the engine got real loud but the big Impala didn’t move anywhere, and then it suddenly slammed into Reverse and we went careening backwards through the forest…

_Well, you certainly couldn’t drive,_ she replied, _and it was like something clicked for me. Get you out of danger. That was my only thought and my only mission. It wouldn’t be until later, much later, that I figured out that I had suddenly turned sentient in_ that _particular moment. Don’t know why. Took a while to set in, I guess._

“So… you helped us run?”

_That’s right. Just high-tailed it the hell outta that vamp’s nest. Poor thing – you actually thought you were in control! Just about shit your pants!_ She cackled to herself, but then turned serious. _I didn’t know how to tell you, man. Not without freaking you out. So I waited._

For what? I wondered.

_Dunno. Thought I was after the ‘right moment’ but when I tried to get your attention, I found… that you just couldn’t hear me._ She broke off, and I couldn’t really think of anything to say to her, so I kept quiet. In her silence, I heard the distinct clipping of pages against the air. Seriously, Sam was losing his stealth – I knew exactly what he was up to, and I was just winding up to rail on him about looking through Dad’s journal again, but my car beat me to it. Sorta.

_Tell Sammy he ain’t gonna find anything about me in that book of his,_ she said flatly, like she was bored. _There were a handful of entries at one time, but they’re all gone now._

On cue, I rolled my head to the other side of the pillow and glanced at my brother. He was no longer concerned with keeping up his façade and had that damn book under a lamp with the spine all spread out underneath the light, inspecting it closely, plucking at something with a thumb and forefinger.

Torn pages.

I’d noticed them before, and thought them strange, but never really gave it much more attention than that. There were ink blots on the opposing pages, so I figured he’d busted a pen open or some shit like that while trying to write and had ripped the offending notes out to keep the stain from setting into the rest of the book.

_He wrote about me_ , said Baby as I wrenched myself up to get a better look. _After he railed on you for running off with me and Sammy, he was inspecting me for new damage, and something told me it was time to let him know what I was, so I just started talking to him. You think Sam flipped his shit when he found out about me? Shoulda seen John…_

I frowned.

_He tried everything in the damn book. Exorcisms, hexes, spells, potions… you name it. When he figured out none of that was gonna kill me, he began his quest to learn more. Lo and behold, we actually became friends. Sorta. I mean, we didn’t hate each other, but… he never really got used to me, ya know?_

“Where did his notes go?” I asked. Sam thought I was talking to him. He smoothed a hand over the folded-open binding, running his fingers over the feathered edges of the torn pages, and with a frown and a shrug he said, “Beats me.”

_He tore them out,_ my car responded. _Think he meant to give them to you along with my keys, but… I don’t know what happened. Maybe he decided against it._

I waited a heartbeat for more, but apparently she didn’t have any, so I rolled a hand and fought the iron weight in the back of my skull and asked, “Why wouldn’t he want me to know?”

_First off, he never really figured me out,_ Baby drawled. _He tried. He did all this research. All these experiments. I told you, I didn’t react to any of it. His theory was I was a spirit attached to a car for some reason but he could never determine if that were true or not._ She paused, like she was thinking, and then she said, _He did get one thing right. He noted that I was always at my strongest when you were around._

“Dean? You ok? You’re staring off into space,” my brother said. I waved him off. At least, I thought I did, but all I managed was a flick of my shoulder. My headache was subsiding and my consciousness was becoming blissfully foggy, thanks to the painkillers. Had to be strong stuff. Most drugs didn’t work this quickly or this well on me anymore. Built-up immunity and all. (I’ll bet I’ve been on every med in the book at least once over the course of my life.)

_Dean, why do you think John gave his precious Impala to you?_ Baby was oblivious to my fading awareness, because she kept right on going with a low laugh to herself. I could almost hear her smiling, _He didn’t know what I was, he didn’t know how I got here, he didn’t know where the hell I came from, but he did know this: you needed me as much as I needed you._


	11. Chapter 11

**CHAPTER ELEVEN**

I hate hunting. I hate the pain. I hate the fear, the ferocity, the numbness of the fight and the agony of the letdown. But, see, sometimes I _don’t_ , because I’ll vouch for the fact that there’s no better high than getting ready to finish the hunt you’ve been busting your ass over.

It was in Sam’s face. His eyebrows were pulled close together on his forehead. Metal clinked against metal as he sifted through a box of ammo, carefully examining each bullet. They were all made of silver – poison to skinwalkers – but we just had to make sure that every single round was, in fact, sterling. Normally, I’d be right beside him on the couch, rooting out the bullets that didn’t fit the bill, but I was lucky to even be allowed to watch. Guess he was still worried about my head or something. I don’t know why. I felt fine. Er, mostly fine. Drugs were wearing off and the headache was trying to creep back in, but that was a good thing. I didn’t want to be groggy during the fight, and as much as I hate being in pain, pain keeps you alert. So I didn’t try to ignore the headache. I embraced it. 

My hands were heavy with the weight of the knife I kept for the sole purpose of shapeshifter execution. It wasn’t pure silver, but the nasty serrated blade was coated in a thick layer of it. It probably needed a second treatment. My thumb caught in a particularly deep scratch through the coating and chipped some of the metal off. I frowned. Not ideal, but it would get the job done. (Dad claimed he took down a pack of werewolves armed with nothing but a silver-plated letter opener, but uh… yeah. I still don’t buy that one.)

“So. This pony’s holed up at an abandoned mine about twenty minutes outside of town.” Sam popped the cylinder out of his pistol, spun it once, and set to work filling it up with bullets. “Been guarding it for the last century and a half. Nobody knows what’s inside the collapsed tunnel because nobody’s lived long enough to find out. If I’m gonna finally put this thing back in the dirt” – he slammed the cylinder home with a flick of his wrist – “then that’s the best place to hang out.”

_And if he’s not there?_ The Impala spoke up. Unsurprisingly, Sam didn’t reply to her, and she needled me. _C’mon. Ask him! We need a contingency plan here! I’m not rushing into this blind!_

So I said, “You know for sure the son of a bitch will be there?” The knife was a little dull, but it’d have to do. No time to sharpen it.

Sam picked up a second handgun and dropped the empty clip onto the coffee table. “All the lore says that’s the phantom stallion’s home base. If nobody’s home, I’ll just wait.” He slapped the clip back into place and tucked the guns away in a threadbare duffel bag.

_Just what I want to do. Park on top of a mountain and sit there while the sky tries to bury me._ She growled. _Great contingency plan, Sammy._

Oblivious to Baby’s grumbling, Sam carried on with packing his bag. He threw a critical glance at the window behind me and frowned. “They said the storm was supposed to let up. Two hours ago.” He shrugged, picked up his bag, thought better of it, and snatched my heavy green army jacket from where I’d dropped it. 

Baby grumbled again. _Couldn’t wait ‘til the weather’s nicer, could we!_

“Mind if I borrow this?” Sam gestured with the jacket folded over his arm.

I stared at him for a long moment with my brow low over my eyes and my lips pinched taut. Thought real hard. Damn, my head hurt. I gripped my knife, twirled it in my hand. Sammy’s eyes went hard and he started towards me. Then I said, “No. I’m gonna need it.”

_Dean. He doesn’t think you should—_

“You’re staying here.” My brother’s voice was sharp, and I went to argue but he cut me off. “You’re staying here where you won’t get your head bashed in again.”

“You’re not going after this monster by yourself!” I shot off the bed, then sat down heavily again when the world threw itself in a circle beneath my feet. “I won’t let you, Sammy!”

_Well, I’ll be there too,_ Baby said meekly. _But that’s not the point, is it?_

“I’ve fought worse monsters on my own,” Sam pointed out.

“No, Sammy.” I stumbled over to my younger brother and gripped his upper arm hard with a shaking hand, because I suddenly realized I was _scared._ Scared of being left here without him, without _Baby;_ downright terrified of the thought of Sammy going up against the skinwalker without me. I searched around for words as he looked at me with eyes softened by concern, widening his stance to keep us both from crashing to the ground as my balance failed me.

“You see this?” I thrust a finger at my head. My broke, busted, fucked-up head. “I know I’m hurt. I’m hurt real bad. I’m scared, Sammy. My brain’s messed up. I know it is.” I was shaking all over now, looking up into Sam’s face, feeling weak, exposed, worried. “That bastard did this to me with a single kick. He would’ve killed me if you hadn’t been there. I can’t… can’t let you go by yourself. He’ll brain you and he won’t stop ‘til you’re done for, and I have to be there to stop it. I have to keep you safe!” Both hands on his shoulders now. Didn’t shake him, but wanted to. “Do you understand me?! Goddammit, Sam – you’re _not_ going on your own!”

 “Ok, Dean. Ok.” Sam moved to support my weight when I sort of fell into him. Not sure why. Not like I couldn’t hold myself up or anything like that. I just… didn’t want to. “You can come, but you have to let me worry about you, too.”

I kept quiet.

“You promise me you’ll stay with the Impala unless things go south.” Sam felt me struggling to gain balance again, so he shifted his stance to help, gripping me tight by the upper arm and steadying me. “You won’t fight unless you absolutely have to. I want you there, Dean, but I can’t have you getting yourself killed, either.” He glanced up, got this embarrassed look on his face, raised his voice, and said, “You got that, car? If you’re here to keep him – us – safe, you’ll keep my idiot brother locked up.”

_Will do, Sammy. I love babysitting._ I could almost hear her grin. _Just like old times, eh, Dean?_

“Bitch,” I mumbled, and my car just laughed.

* * *

I slipped into the driver’s seat before Sam could banish me to the back. The Impala’s massive big block motor was already running, headlights burning low, and she greeted me with a soft click of the blinkers and swung her door open in welcome. I patted the roof as I settled into the bench seat, grinning inwardly as Sam swore at the machine when he found the passenger’s side door locked.

“Quit it,” I warned.

The car huffed air through her exhaust and threw her door open with enough force to send Sam stumbling back a few steps. Sam bit his lip, shouldered his bag, and sat down heavily beside me with the duffel in his lap. He was layered up in about three different shirts while I was happily bundled in my army jacket. I kicked back, made sure to keep my feet out of the way of the brake and the gas, and readied myself for the journey ahead.

“Aren’t you gonna—“

I patted the steering wheel in front of me. “She’s got it.”

_Just tell me where to go._ She calmly backed out of her spot and headed for the garage door. We emerged from the parking structure and launched into the snow. The motor growled as Baby gunned it to ease past a snowbank, and I felt her back end slipping out from under her, but she regained it with a gentle roll of the steering wheel back to straight. _Damn. This is gonna suck._

“Probably.” I watched the whited-out landscape start to streak past as she joined the slow flow of traffic on the main roads. The snow wasn’t coming down quite as hard, but either they hadn’t dispatched snowplows recently or they didn’t have the balls to be out. I wasn’t sure what time it was. It was well on its way to being dark out. Light pollution bounced off the ceiling of low-hanging clouds. I squinted at the watch strapped to my wrist, yanked my sleeve back to get a good look at it. Yep. I was right. Close to eight at night.

I could tell Sam was still freaked out by the Impala driving herself. He was all tense, hands working uneasily over the strap of his duffel bag. He kept looking out the window then back to the self-moving steering wheel, clearing his throat, unsure of what to do.

“Do you need a hospital?” he asked quietly after a moment. The Impala hesitated as we crossed an intersection, but got back on the gas when Sam didn’t tell her to turn.

“No.”

“You’re slurring your words, you’re not making sense, you’re pale as a ghost, and…”

_You’re talking to a car. But guess what? So are you, Sammy._

“You should be getting better by now.” Sam cleared his throat again and glanced down at a folded-up map in his fist. “Uh… turn right up here.”

_Roger that._

“I’ll get better.” I hoped, anyway.

“It’s been almost three days. You should be showing some sort of improvement, and you’re not.”

A pang of dread weighed heavy in my gut, because I knew he was right, but I really didn’t want to think about that now. “Let’s focus on killing the asshole that did this to me, yeah?”

“Right.” Sam nodded to himself, and we lapsed into silence.

* * *

_Road closed for season? Crap._

“Damn it,” Sam cussed, squinting at his map. Snow settled in heavy drops on the Impala’s windshield. She angrily shoved it away with her wipers only for it to start collecting again. I was getting tired, but I forced myself to stay awake and instead focused on the roadblock directly in our path.

_That’s one hell of a road._ Baby leaned forward, shocks creaking. _Dirt. Wait, what does that say? Authorized four-wheel drive only?_

“You sure this is it?” I glanced over at Sam.

“The mine is about a half mile up there.” He bit his lip. “I didn’t even think about the road being closed.”

_Heh. Clearly._

“It’s on top of a mountain. In the dead of winter. In a freakin’ blizzard.” I raised an eyebrow.

“I get that _now._ ”

Baby revved her engine up. _Four-wheel drive? We’ll see about that…_

Sam suddenly looked horrified as the shifter fell to Reverse and the Impala’s massive form began to slip backwards through the snow. “What’s she doing?”

_I’d hold onto something._

My brother’s face went totally pale when I buckled my seat belt for the first time in probably years and slapped a hand down on the door panel. I just gave him the smuggest bitch look I could while his expression twitched with terrified nervousness. He fit his belt together, too, and gripped the side of the bench seat like his life depended on it.

_Authorized four-wheel drive, my ass!_ The Impala reared back on her haunches, dug her chained-up tires into the snow, and plunged nose-first towards the roadblock.


	12. Chapter 12

**CHAPTER TWELVE**

“Holy crap, Baby!” Through gritted teeth, I spat the words, clutching the door panel for dear life as the Impala swung wide around a turn. “You drive worse than Sam!”

My car and my brother both said “shut up” at the same time _._ Sam socked me in the arm.

Despite the fact that I was slightly terrified, I was glad that the Impala was driving and I wasn’t, because let’s be real. I would’ve dumped us off the side of the hill by now. Er, cliff. That was definitely a cliff. I braved a glance over the side and felt my stomach bottom out. And it made me real dizzy. I closed my eyes and pretended we were driving anywhere but on the side of a Colorado mountain in six feet of snow. Yeah. Nice highway through the desert. Definitely no way we’d slip and barrel-roll to our deaths. Yeah, that’s the stuff…

“That it?” Leather squealed as Sam sat up straighter.

_I smell a skinwalker._ The Impala got on the brakes just as the edges of her headlights’ reach licked at the mountain that reared out of the ground right in front of us, and there it was. The mine. It was blocked off, of course, but the only thing standing between us and the entrance was a decaying wooden sign that looked like it hadn’t been put together right in the first place. Sam stiffened as he saw it, and I squinted through the falling snow to try and make sense of the peeling block letters slapped across the rotting panels.

My brother beat me to it. “’Keep out. Mine supports unstable. Danger of collapse’,” he read aloud. “Oh, goody.”

_Oh, you know you wanted the imminent danger of a cave-in to spice up your hunt,_ the Impala said. She killed her headlights. Damn, it was dark. Couldn’t tell if that was because of the clouds or if it was nighttime already. How long had we been driving for? I yawned and absently scratched at the bandage still wrapped around my skull. I could feel my pulse at the back of my neck. Did that mean something bad? Hoped not.

The Impala idled for a few more seconds, then cut her engine. It was quiet. Too quiet. Didn’t like it. Ever been in the eye of a hurricane? Felt like that, only worse.

“Better get comfy, Dean. We might be out here a while.” Sam straightened the collar of his jacket and tugged his sleeves down to cover his hands. I just watched him with a blank expression until he shrugged and answered the question I didn’t voice. “I’m going to sit outside the mine until the skinwalker shows.”

“What if it doesn’t?”

“It will.”

“I want to go with you.” I figured I’d try one last time and threw my brother the best sad-puppy face I could muster.

His eyes slid over to me, saw the look on my face, and rolled his eyes. “No, Dean. You stay put.” He thrust a finger at the Impala’s dashboard. “Ok, car. You better keep him out of trouble. Got it?”

_Roger that._ She clicked her lights. _He ain’t goin’ anywhere._

“C’mon, Sammy. Please—“

“Dude, you’re lucky I even let you come this far.” Sam eyed me hard, picked up his pistol and knife with one hand and went for the door with the other. “Look at me.”

I tried, but ended up looking right past him instead.

“No, Dean. Look me in the eye.”

Strange. I couldn’t.

Sam saw this and shook his head, then blew through his lips. “Dean, I’ve told you. Stop worrying about me and look after yourself for once. Ok? Stay put.”

“What if you need me?” I cocked an eyebrow. Sam tilted his head. I chewed my tongue and said, “Look, if I see that thing ripping you to shreds, I’m not gonna sit here and watch it happen!”

“Dean, if you decide to leave this car,” Sam said, shouldering the door open, “there better be a damn good reason.”

* * *

_Could you at least try to stay still? Sheesh._

It’d only been a quarter of an hour since Sammy took off and I was already going stir-crazy. Couldn’t find a comfortable position for the life of me. Right now, I was flat on my back in the front seat with one hand draped through the lower spokes of the steering wheel and my knees bent skyward. Felt kinda strange, but kept the stress off my sore back, but the longer I sat like this the more I realized my knees bugged me something fierce.

“If it’s bothering you,” I drawled, “you could always let me out.”

_Hah! Nice try._ Metal creaked as the Impala shifted and gently shook the snow off of her. Her motor was still, but she kept her wipers active, probably just to quiet me. Made me less nervous that I could see the entrance of the mine Sam was guarding, not that it really mattered. For all I knew, the action could be going down right now somewhere deep inside the mountain. I kept hoping I’d blink and see my brother stalking back out into the open with the severed head of the skinwalker clutched in his fist.

“Think he’s all right?” Agitation pricked at the back of my neck. Damn, I wanted to be in there with him. This was still my fight, far as I was concerned. You knock somebody upside the head hard enough and it’s bound to become a little bit personal.

_I think I see him. He’s in the trees to the left._ Baby’s wipers ticked away the most recent dusting of heavy snow. _He’s fine._

“Where’s the skinwalker? Should’ve shown up by now.” I hung my arms over the back of the seat and stared out through the rearview. All I saw as snow, snow, and more snow.

_It’s been fifteen minutes, driver. Relax._

 “Can you hear anything?”

  _Nothing but the wind in the trees,_ Baby replied, but something in her voice told me that she, too, was fighting to stay positive.

Try as I might, I still couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling prickling at the base of my skull. I wrapped one hand around the Impala’s wheel, flexed a few times in preparation, and hoisted myself into a sitting position. My equilibrium still threw me in a circle, but I calmed it down pretty quick and squinted through the storm. It had pretty much eased up by now, but the white stuff was still coming down. It was dark, too. There was an eerie glow reflecting off the snow, light pollution trapped by the low cloud cover, and the ghostly atmosphere didn’t exactly settle me.

_Sam can handle himself. You know that._ Honestly, I couldn’t tell who she was trying to convince: me, or herself. I frowned and dragged my fingernails up and down my arm to distract myself from my pessimism.

“Where is that damn thing?”

My car hesitated. _Maybe he got wise._

“No, no, something’s off. You can feel it too.” I eyed her critically. “Can’t you?”

She was quiet again. I could almost feel her thinking, trying to spin her words in a way that wouldn’t get me all worked up because she wanted to protect my apparently delicate brain. I twisted around, fought a killer headache, and glared through the rear windshield and into the storm. The back of my neck prickled anew like somebody’d static-charged my spine. 

“It’s watching us.” I felt under the seat for the silver-loaded pistol Sam had left me with.

Around me, the Impala tensed up with the soft _creak_ of metal. She didn’t say anything, and that’s how I knew I was right. I bared my teeth and gently thumbed the safety into the _off_ position. My heart pounded in my ears, pissing off my head, splitting reality, but I shook it off.

“Baby,” I said softly. “Where’s Sam?”

_He’s gone into the mine,_ she said darkly. _Thought he heard something inside. Went to investigate._

“The son of a bitch is out here, isn’t it?” My hand crept over to the door handle.

 My car clamped her locks down and growled at me through her vents. _Don’t you dare,_ she snapped.

“Let me at it!” I shot back, yanking on the door handle. Didn’t even budge.

_No._

“Oh, hell.” I was shaking all over now as a dark shape materialized out of the snow. Everything fell into place then. The thing knew I wasn’t gonna be a factor. It was waiting. Waiting for Sam to go inside, turn his back. 

“Goddammit, Baby – let me end this fucker! _Now_!” Because there it was, the huge shape of the silver stallion moving with surprising grace through the storm. Straight towards the mine. Straight towards _Sam._ The damn thing knew it could corner my brother inside.

_No, Dean! I can’t protect you out there!_

“Baby—“

_NO! You get hurt again and you’re DEAD!_ She sounded panicked as I felt.

“I can’t let it get to Sam!” I shouted back at her. My car was shivering now, too, tremors rocking her big metal body. Her locks rattled in their sockets. The skinwalker dropped to a walk and strode towards the entrance to the mine with purpose, ears flat back and neck outstretched. Going in for the kill. “Baby! I _gotta do something_!”

_Yeah. We do._ The Impala started her engine, RPMs spiking in one rev, two revs, piercing the darkness with the twin beams of her brights. The horse’s head snaked around at the sound, and in a spray of snow it spun on its haunches. I saw the gears clicking in its head: did it fend off against the immediate threat of me and my car, or go after the unsuspecting Sam?

I intended to make sure it didn’t get the chance to do either.

When the Impala dropped her passenger’s side window, I was already rolling across the seat and laying my elbow against the chrome trim with my forearm extended and exposed to the chilly Colorado air. I snapped back my gun’s slide, aimed down the sights, and pulled the trigger. The bullet didn’t quite hit where I’d meant for it to – instead of going straight into the skinwalker’s heart, it skipped across the monster’s side and opened up an angry red slash along its shoulder.

The skinwalker reared up and I flinched, half-expecting the son of a bitch to jump at the Impala, but instead it rounded on a different target: the mine itself. It planted its front hooves against one of the sagging wooden beams propping up the entrance, gave it a good shove, reared back and struck again, over and over.

_Keep shooting!_  the Impala urged, and I took aim.

“Hey!”

It was Sam, rushing into the glare of the Impala’s lights, out of the darkness of the mine. I faltered with my finger on the trigger. “Outta the way, Sam,” I muttered. To take a shot at the skinwalker would mean taking a shot towards Sam, and I didn’t trust my aim enough to do it.

“Sam! MOVE!” I screamed. The Impala edged closer to the action, engine hot. My brother looked towards me, losing focus for a precious second.

There was a sharp _crack._ The beam shattered. The skinwalker dropped to all fours. Behind it, Sam cried out as the rafters started to cave, and frozen dirt poured down right in his path.

The mine was collapsing.

And now half a ton of pissed-off, bloodthirsty horseflesh was bearing down on me and my car.


	13. Chapter 13

**CHAPTER THIRTEEN**

I’ve done some seriously stupid things in my life. But literally throwing myself in the skinwalker’s path? That one has to take the cake.

I’ll blame the concussion for what I did, but let’s be real: it was sheer, idiotic panic that made me throw a shoulder against the Impala’s door and tumble out into the snow. All I saw was the mountain falling on my little brother, and I knew I was gonna be the one to rescue him. Stupid! What the hell did I think I was gonna do? Now that I was outside the Impala, I had no clue what my next move was.

So I did the only thing I could think to do: I ran.

Behind me, the Impala violently cussed, kicked herself into gear, and then she lunged after me. I didn’t pay any attention to her or the evil stallion because all I cared about was getting to Sam. Snow grabbed at my calves, chilled and froze my jeans, messing with my already uncoordinated gait. I had to focus pretty hard on where I was putting my feet…

…Which is probably why I didn’t feel the pain at first.

_DEAN!_

Something hard and heavy tried to take my lower half off at the base of my spine. The impact tripped me up, and suddenly all that snow was rushing up to greet me. It swallowed my hands first, then a leg and a shoulder and half my face. I actually _felt_ my brain sloshing to one corner of my skull as I came down on my side.

Then it was there, that horrible horse-thing, right above me with its fangs bared and a thick string of saliva swinging from its jaws as it debated the best angle to dash my brains out onto the ice… and then it wasn’t.

I smelled exhaust. A chrome wheel flashed inches away from my face. I lifted my head and saw nothing but salt-stained metal, angry red taillights… wait a minute. When did my car get in front of me? I dragged an elbow underneath me and spat through clenched teeth as pain nipped my spine.

There was a nasty inhuman shriek followed by a wet sort of _crunch_ , and then there was blood on the snow.

 _Get up, Dean,_ the Impala begged, voice run thin with strain as she faced off against the downed skinwalker. _Don’t tell me that thing broke your back. GET UP!_

It was an ugly process that involved me sort of rolling back over my shoulder and lurching around like a drunk for a few seconds, but I finally found my balance. My clothes were sopping wet with snowmelt. I swung around to stare at my car with wide eyes, stunned. The Impala had the skinwalker literally pinned to a tree. The thing was bleeding from several new wounds, and – holy shit, was that _bone_ sticking out of its side?

_Move, damn it!_

Was she talking to me? The skinwalker reared up, ripping a foreleg away from the crush of my car’s grille, and it landed one, two, three hits on the smooth black metal. My car roared, but the monster had managed to mostly free itself and was scrambling up over the hood, its cold eyes locked on me –

_GODDAMMIT, DEAN! GET TO SAM!_

“Hell!” I tripped over a tract gouged into the snow by the Impala’s wheels, loped a few pathetic steps on all fours, got back up and blindly bolted through the snow. I wasn’t sure where I thought I’d end up until my palms slammed against the splintered remains of the warning sign in front of the unstable mine. “Sam. Sam!” I bellowed, even as frozen dirt and dark snow avalanched around me. “Talk to me, Sam! You in there?!”

No answer. I threw myself at the hill of dirt in front of me, sloughing it away with cupped hands until my fingertips were raw, but every handful I took out was replaced with twice as much. Behind me, the Impala’s engine spiked with rage, but she was strong. She and the skinwalker were pretty evenly matched, I reckoned. Didn’t risk a look back to see for sure. All that mattered was that I stop my little brother from being buried alive. 

I kept scratching at the hill. Kept losing ground and had to clamber back up. The bandage around my skull started to itch, so I ripped it off and tossed it somewhere to the side. The sudden burn of cold against my exposed wound was enough to startle my busted brain into some sort of clarity.

Then, “Dean!”

“Sam!” I stopped my rabid-dog digging long enough to listen. “Sammy! You good?”

A pained groan, strained words. “I can’t move.”

Any relief I’d felt at the sound of my brother’s voice was gone. “Just hang on, man.” There! There was still a gap towards the roof of the mine. I dug my heels in and powered up the hill of loose dirt, chunks of icy snow and splintered rafters, started to throw the muck out of the way so I could shimmy through.

“I think my arm’s trapped.” Dirt shifted. Sam grunted through clenched teeth. “Yeah… it definitely is.”

“Fuck! Is it bad?” I stuck my head through, but it was black as coal in the partially collapsed mine. Far as I could tell, the avalanche caused by the skinwalker had stopped, but I think at least half the mountainside had collapsed on us.

My brother laughed sharply. “Dunno. I can’t see it.”

“I’m comin’, Sammy.” I threw myself onto my stomach, damn near knocking the breath outta myself, and thrashed my way through the small gap. My ass scraped the ceiling and my chest plowed through the dirt. My descent to the floor was less than graceful but I managed to land face-up in the darkness.

I fumbled around for the flashlight I kept in the breast pocket of my green jacket, flipped it on with numb fingers. The place was a mess: all broken rocks, ancient dirt, shattered support beams. Luckily, it seemed the damage was localized to the front of the mine only. I beamed the flashlight down the mineshaft. Seemed the wood that hadn’t been exposed to years of sun and weather was holding up – for now, at least.

I didn’t intend to stick around long enough to find out if that was true.

“Over here.” Sam gritted out from somewhere behind. I swung my flashlight towards the sound of his voice. He was on the ground close to the caved-in entrance, stretched out on his side facing wall with his back facing me. A layer of dust had settled over his form, and I had a dark thought: if he’d died right there, you’d never be able to distinguish him from his grave of downed rock. His neck was craned around, the one eye I could see rolled all the way to the corner, the white of it flashing in the darkness like polished glass.

“Sam!” I crashed down on my knees next to him, flicking the flashlight around as I surveyed the damage. He had a hand clamped around the opposing bicep… he was right. Couldn’t see it. There was a rotted beam lying at an angle across his whole arm, weighed down on either side by God knows how much dirt and rock, effectively pinning him in place.

“You’re bleeding again,” he wheezed.

Was I? My head buzzed. I touched my forehead with two fingers, then wiped the fresh blood onto my jacket. Didn’t matter now. I gripped the wooden beam with both hands and hauled on it as hard as I could. It budged, and I was about to bear down on it again, but Sam hissed through his teeth and gave an ugly grimace.

“What hurts?” I asked, grabbing the flashlight from where I’d dropped it and leaning over my brother. Something wasn’t right. With me, I mean. I felt there was something very, deeply wrong with the way I moved, and I felt the swelling heat of injury in my lower back mimicked inside my skull. But adrenaline is a hell of a drug, so I didn’t think twice about it.

“Wrist,” Sam spat. “It’s twisted – gah! Ease up there, Dean!”

“Sorry.” I quit pulling on the beam and tried to figure a gentler approach to hauling it off Sam. My mind clunked through the situation, eyes raking the length of the fallen rafter. How the hell was I supposed to get my brother free?

“It’s ok. Try again,” Sam panted, knuckles white as he dug his fingers into the loose fabric of his jacket like he could pull himself out that way. I coiled up, ready to heave again, when he asked, “Where’s the skinwalker?”

Man, I wish he’d asked me that sooner.

The buzzing in the back of my head finally took form: The Impala’s voice.  _DEAN! DO YOU HEAR ME? IT GOT AWAY FROM ME AND IT’S –_

\-- lunging at me. The skinwalker dropped out of beast mode at some point and I found a very human fist lobbed at my chest. The impact drove me against the fallen beam that pinned Sam, earning a choked cry from him and a forced exhalation from me, but if it hurt I didn’t notice, because I was punching that son of a bitch with everything I had in me. It didn’t really faze him, though. It was like hammering a solid wall of half-naked muscle that happened to have a face.

I caught the man in the nose and sent him reeling. Finally! He staggered back, blood spattering onto his bare chest, clutching helplessly at his face as blood slipped between his fingers. I stood back, victorious – if only for a moment.

 _You ok? Shit, man, tell me you’re ok!_ Outside, I heard the thrum of the machine’s engine, fading in and out like she was pacing.

The bastard was bleeding, bad, way worse than I was. Whatever the Impala had done to him, it was ugly –looked like he’d gone ten rounds with, well, the wrong end of a pissed-off car. He was all bruised, bloodied, smashed up, bones turned to dust, you name it. But he was a monster, and monsters don’t die easily. (That’s why I’m not out of a job.)

“Dean!”

The skinwalker reared back and jumped at me again, swinging a bruised-up fist at my face. I narrowly dodged. The blow glanced hard off my shoulder, sending me spinning. I almost stepped on Sam’s good arm, but he rolled himself up just in time as I came down hard on my ass in the cold dirt with a surprised grunt.

Balance: Gone. Depth perception: Done for. This fight wasn’t going like I wanted it to.

 _SILVER, DEAN!_ the Impala screamed. _WHERE’S YOUR SILVER? USE IT!_

Silver?

I slapped at my pockets.

Empty.

My gun was on the floor of the Impala. My knife was on the seat. “I got nothing!” I yelled at my car.

“Dean!”

I whipped around to glare wide-eyed at Sam. His good arm lashed out. Something hissed across the frozen dirt floor, quietly bumped into my thigh. His gun. I plucked it up, fumbled with the slide for a second, snapped it back with numb fingers, but by that point the skinwalker was close, too close to get a good shot off. It’d flipped back to beast mode. The hulking stallion was hurt, though, distracted by pain. It was limping bad, and now I saw its back leg was gone from the hock down, dangling uselessly from the loose hip joint, a thin rope of mangled muscle swinging close to the ground…

I put it out of its misery.

The pistol kicked in my hands, once, twice, three bullets right between the eyes. Blood exploded from the cracked skull. Brains, too, but I couldn’t tell in the dark. The thing dropped to its chest, looked me dead in the eye, spat out its last breath, collapsed onto its side, and just like that it was over.

Silence.

_Is it—_

I put one more shot right through the heart just to be safe. Behind me, Sam jumped at the sound. Er, would have jumped, had he not been pinned to the floor by half a mountain. The bullet casing clanged away down the mineshaft, and I dropped the gun. “Don’t think it’s getting back up,” I said, and with one hand on the small of my injured back, I stooped like an old man and staggered over to rest a hand on the beam that held my brother to the ground.

“You ok?” he asked through clenched teeth.

“Yeah,” I breathed, picking out a gap in the downed rock face at the mine’s entrance. Light bled in from outside. Headlights. The Impala peered in, her engine thrumming. She looked gory. Black paint shone in the darkness, slicked up by blood; what I could see of her chrome grille was hidden under a fine sheen of red. Her headlight was busted, too.

 _Holy hell,_ she said. _That was a pain in the ass._

“Over now,” I said. My head still spun, my back ached like hell, but I ignored it. I was all Save Sammy Mode now. “We got tow cables, right?”

_Yup._

“Hold tight, Sammy.” I pushed off the floor and started back up the avalanche, intent on getting outside. “Time to move a mountain.”

 


	14. Chapter 14

**CHAPTER FOURTEEN**

 Knee-deep in snow and trying to dig out part of a collapsed fourteener, I made up my mind: we were going somewhere warm and flat after this. No, somewhere _hot_. I’m talking triple-digits. This subzero Colorado mountain bullshit was old news.

_Hey, hey! Focus, Dean. Focus!_

What the hell did she want from me? I was about as focused as a guy with a severe head injury could be.

 _No, you ain’t. Know what you’re doing with those?_ The Impala didn’t sound pissed, just tired.

I took the cold steel fasteners in my fists and stared at them.

_You’re bringing those to Sam. Got it?_

“What’s he gonna do with ‘em?” In the past half hour, I’d managed to dig out at least part of the avalanched hill, enough to widen the gap at the top but not enough to unbury Sam. But’s that’s why Baby came up with the plan and I didn’t. I was just doing what she told me.

 _I need to lift the rafter he’s caught under,_ she explained patiently. I had a feeling it wasn’t the first time she’d run through the plan with me. _All you gotta do is hitch everything up. Ok? Think you can handle that?_

On all fours, I clambered up and over the avalanche, dropping sloppily into the mine. “Just put a half-ton skinwalker down,” I said. “’Course I can hook a couple straps to a wooden beam.”

Ok. Maybe not. The dull roar in my lower back was making it pretty damn hard to walk and we’re not even going to talk about the blood running into my eyes. Subzero weather sucks, but having the same wound stitched up five times in a row sucks worse. Ah, well. Chicks dig scars, right? Just another one to add to the collection.

_FOCUS!_

“D-Dean?” Sam was shaking like a leaf now. It was cold outside, sure, but inside the mine it was probably a good ten degrees cooler, probably more if you wandered down into the decaying mineshaft. The flashlight I’d dropped earlier cast ghostly shadows on the wall of downed rock behind him and highlighted his shivering form.

“Yeah.” I hobbled over next to him. In the glare of the flashlight, Sam looked pale as a dead man with heavy dark circles under his eyes. Something was wrong with him. Hypo… hypo-something. Couldn’t think of the word.

“You d-doing ok?” Sam was having as hard a time speaking as I was getting the bright yellow tow straps around the huge beam pinning him to the floor.

“No.” When I spoke, Sam’s face fell, but I waved him off. “Doesn’t matter. C’mon.”

“Dean—“

“Doesn’t matter,” I snapped, a little sharper than I meant, but whatever.  “We gotta get you out.”

Sam fell silent. It annoyed me. All I could hear was the ringing in my ears and it was bad. My hands felt like they were attached to someone else’s body and at this point I could barely feel my fingers, let alone _move_ them. I fumbled with the straps and the fasteners.

A sheet of scarlet blood gleamed like glass on the floor behind Sam. Even in death, the skinwalker watched. I shuddered and made a mental note to burn the son of a bitch when I got the chance.

“Should do it,” I mumbled through frozen lips. On the ground, Sam breathed hard and raspy like he was sick. We had to fucking _move_.

 _Check the straps again,_ Baby commanded, not unkindly. I gave the ends of the ratcheting tow straps a good yank, and when they didn’t budge, I stepped back. “We’re good,” I responded and knelt on the frozen dirt next to my brother, laid a numb hand on his good arm. From this angle, I could see his struggles had torn the sleeve away from his jacket as well as his shirt, exposing raw, bare skin at his shoulder. Poor guy was in pain. I could see it in his face, lips pinched down at the corners, eyes dull.

 _Watch him._ Outside the mine, the Impala’s engine kicked up with a roar that rattled the loose rocks. What did she mean by that? Not like I could really help much. I understood, though, when the massive beam shuddered and screamed and started to budge. Sam sucked in a sharp breath, screwed up his face. “GAH! _Damn_ it!”

“Sammy?”

“Get this thing off me! Just go!” Sam’s hand found my jacket’s hem and dug into it. He almost yanked me down onto the ground next to him as he wove his hand deep into the fabric, knuckles going white, muscles all along his good arm going rigid in sheer agony. Baby got the cue and started hauling again. The bright yellow tow strap snapped taut with a sound like a leather belt slapping bare flesh. Dirt spattered. Rocks pinged off the floor. Ripples spiraled in the pool of blood. Sam cried out, teeth bared and jaw clenched tight.

"Hang on, Sammy," I wheezed, because now he was grabbing blindly at the arm I had braced against his shoulder. His fingers closed on my wrist and he about damn near ripped my shoulder out of its socket. I gritted my teeth and pretended I couldn’t feel his frozen fingers bearing into my wrist bone.

 _HAH!_ The Impala’s engine screamed beyond the downed wall of rock. Something snapped. First, I thought it was a gunshot, the way the sound ricocheted around like a bullet. Instinct kicked in and I ducked low over Sammy. Didn’t need to. Splinters pelted me in the face when I looked up and saw…

…the beam that had pinned Sam? It’d busted in two.

My brother shot up from the floor like he was attached to a spring. That wasn’t good for me since my balance was absolute crap, and he slammed full-force into me, almost knocking the wind outta me with his skull. “Easy, Sammy!” I rasped out, sloppily widening my stance to keep us both off the floor.

His whole body shook. “Dean,” He coughed. “My arm.”

“Yeah, I know. I know.”

 _Y’all good?_  Light flooded the mine as the Impala peered in again.

“It’s broken.” Sam sat heavily on his ass, staring at his arm in shock.

I couldn’t see too well, but even so, I could tell his wrist was bent at a fucked-up angle, hand swinging uselessly from his sleeve. “Shit.” I palmed blood away from my eye so I could look up, saw the bright yellow tow strap attached to the busted-off half of the rafter. Needed to unhook it. I turned, searched for a way to edge up the side of the hill to get at it—

Skinwalker.

It leered at us through those dead, lightless eyes. I tried to forget the son of a bitch was there as I tripped the tow strap’s locking mechanism, unhooked it, almost hammered myself in the face with it when I slung it up the side of the hill and knelt to grab Sammy with the same motion. With a fistful of sleeve on his good arm, I took his weight across my shoulders and powered us both out of the mine, but not before I spit in the skinwalker’s dead face. I always had the last word.  

* * *

I don’t think I blacked out, but I must’ve, because I remember getting into the Impala after securing Sam but I don’t remember the drive, and next thing I knew I was roused from a less-than-satisfying nap by the car’s squealing brakes and a slight jostle of the seat. _Get up,_ my car said to me. Light filtered in through her windows: the sun breaching the mountain peaks. Sun! I sat up fast, put a hand to my head and waited for the spots to clear from my vision, stared in disbelief at the sky. Seriously? _Now_ the snow decided to stop?

Well, shit. Four hours had passed since the last time I’d looked at my watch. I blinked fast, picked out the dark shape of some kinda building against the blinding snow, thumbed dry blood off my cheek, and startled when I caught a figure in the corner of my eye. “Damn it, Sam!”

“How’s your head?” My brother’s face swung into focus. He still looked like shit, skin grayed and pale as, well, a ghost. (I’m allowed to say that. I’ve seen a few in my day.)

My tongue felt like a chunk of dried sponge in my mouth. “Fucked.”

“You gonna live?”

_Guess we’ll find out if he keels over in the parking lot._

I deflected both of them. “Wrist,” I said, pointing dumbly at the arm Sam had clutched across his dusty chest. Had I been the one to wrap it in that rag and duct tape? Couldn’t remember.

He shrugged it off, somehow edged a heavy blanket over his shoulders, and nudged the Impala’s door. She politely held it open for him as he stood on legs I wasn’t sure would hold his weight. He was in bad shape. But when Baby popped the driver’s door so he could get at me, I realized I was, too. And so was my car. All three of us were battered, banged-up, bloodied. Quite the set. “You need a body shop,” I said to her.

_And you need a hospital._

I looked up at the building and dug my heels into the curb. “No!”

_Yep._

I couldn’t read the sign, but I knew what it said. Wasn’t the same hospital as before, thank God. Didn’t feel like explaining our escape to them. But still, I didn’t want to be here. “Damn it!”

_Don’t use that tone of voice with me, Dean._

“Bitch.”

 _And now you’re locked out._ Baby dramatically slapped her locks down and flashed her lights.

“Son of a…” I grimaced and placed a hand flat on my lower back. God, it hurt, and the cold seeping into my damp clothing certainly wasn’t helping. I blew through my lips, shot a baleful glare at Sam as I stumbled and just about took him down with me.

Behind us, my big black Chevy kicked up her engine and sat idling. _Let me know when you’re patched up,_ she said. _Not a moment sooner._

“You can take care of me!” I stumbled again and went down on one knee. Ahead of me, I became aware of the fact that I was being stared at; a couple attendants inside the emergency room began to rush around.

 _Driver, I’ve been taking care of you since before you were born,_ my car replied. The doors busted open and suddenly Sam and I were surrounded by people trying to bundle us inside. I fought them, staring after my battered car as she slunk to some corner of the parking long.

_But even I can only do so much._


	15. Chapter 15

**CHAPTER FIFTEEN**

“What the hell is concussion protocol?” They used glue to shut the wound on my head this time. Guess my skin had gotten too tore up to stitch. My sides felt constricted, which had me panicking for a split second and feeling at my waist, but when my fingers passed over Velcro I remembered: back brace. Right.

“Basically means you can’t do _anything_.” Sam spoke from the other side of the exam room. They had the divider pulled back so he and I could see each other. He was draped in a heavy blanket and had a drink with a straw in the hand that wasn’t bound in a fresh cast.

“Sounds like what I’ve _been_ doing.”

Sam gave me the _are-you-serious_ tilt of the head. “I mean you can’t do anything at all, Dean. Doc said you aren’t allowed to even sleep.”

“Fuck that!”

“You’ve had at least two severe impacts in the last three days,” Sam snapped. “Suck it up.”

“Not my fault.”

“If you’d just stayed at the hotel like I wanted you to—“

“ _You’d_ be horse food.”

 He fell quiet at that and picked at the edge of his cast. His face actually had some color back in it. Doc said he’d suffered mild hypothermia and a severely fractured wrist. Oh well. Wasn’t the first time he’d had his arm bundled in a cast like that. He’d manage.

Me, on the other hand… they basically told me I was jacked for a while. I’d have a nasty scar, and my head was pretty busted up, and my lower back had been ripped open right above my tailbone. Shock’s a hell of a drug, let me tell ya. I just still couldn’t believe the docs bought our bullshit story about a car wreck, but hey, we had the mangled Impala to back that one up. No killer horses in our file today. 

_Y’all put back together?_

This room had no windows, so I angled myself in the direction I assumed the parking lot was. “More or less,” I said. 

_Good. We gotta move._

“Like, now?”

_Like RIGHT now._

“Why?”

I must’ve taken on a strange look, because Sam leaned forward, forehead crinkled with concern. “What? What’s wrong?”

I shushed him and focused on communicating with my car again. “Baby?”

 _Couple walking through the lot took a liking to me,_ she said. _Particularly all the blood on my hood. They called the cops and…_

“And?”

_Now I hear sirens._

“Shit.” I slid off the gurney, tested my weight, and stood with Sam’s help, and he said again, “What?”

I plucked my bloodied jacket from the chair it’d been draped over. “Baby says someone called five-o on us.”

“Guess that’s our cue.” Sam wrapped the blanket tighter around himself, and then just like that we were on our way out the door before anyone realized we’d made a run for it.

* * *

People were actually driving the speed limit, and—holy shit!—I could see the asphalt road instead of that slick blanket of icy snow. The Impala handled herself beautifully on the clearing roads. Her swift weave through traffic and snowbank earned a fair amount of curious (and equally pissed-off) looks from passers-by. (Or maybe it was the fact that her bashed-up front end appeared to be dripping blood.) Whatever the case, we made it back to the hotel in no time, and just as the sun was trying to tease its way past the cloud cover for the first time in what felt like eight years, Sam and I were stumbling back through that dusty parking garage.

Baby stuck herself in a parking spot (completely blowing off the yellow stripes beneath her wheels), making sure her relatively undamaged rear end was visible to traffic, not her mangled grille. She was trying to pop the dents out, but like you and I can heal only so fast, wasn’t like she could get very far without a dent puller.

 _Rest up,_ she said, _and let me know when y’all are ready to roll._

“Will you be safe here?” I was reluctant to let my car out of eyeshot—after all, she had saved my ass back there. I felt like I owed her.

 _We just killed a skinwalker,_ she said. _Think I can handle a few bored cops, don’t you?_

I just grinned to myself. The parking garage was starting to get busy, and I relaxed some when it seemed nobody was giving my damaged car a second glance. They were too obsessed with throwing ski gear around and zipping up their overstuffed jackets over matching snow pants. I wrinkled my nose. Couldn’t move well in gear like that. Couldn’t run. Why restrain yourself if you can avoid it?

“Daddy,” a little girl was saying as her family packed up their aging SUV. Her arms were folded. “I don’t wanna wear my helmet. It’s ugly!”

The man, long-suffering to his spawn’s arguments, sighed heavily. “Either you wear the helmet, or you don’t get to go.”

I stopped walking.

“I’d wear the helmet, kid,” I said. My voice was slurred by the concussion anyway, but you’re damn right I exaggerated it. “Don’t wanna end up looking like me, do you?”

Who _would_ wanna look like me? Torn clothes painted with mud and blood alike. Ugly bruising across my cheek. Equally ugly bandage taped to my forehead. Eyes wild with pain. The girl looked up, gasped, looked to Sam with his busted arm and heavy blanket, and without another word plucked the helmet from her daddy’s hands.

* * *

The ceiling wasn’t very interesting. Neither was the wall. Or the window. At least the floor was carpeted and had all sorts of interesting shadows and colors. But if I stayed like that for too long, with my head kinda hanging off the side of the mattress, it started to hurt real bad again, and I could feel my pulse hammering the glue on my forehead. Sam was hacking away at that computer best he could with only one hand in working condition and his shoulders wrapped in the heavy blanket. I turned on my side, arranged myself so my horribly bruised back didn’t throw much of a fit, and watched the way the laptop’s screen flickered over his face and the wall behind. I was so tired. Hadn’t really slept since I blacked out on the way to the ER. I blinked, struggled to pull my eyes back open, blinked again, failed even harder, shut my eyes again…

My brother pelted me in the face with a dirty sock.

“What the shit?” My eyes snapped open and I slapped the offending clothing item onto the floor.

“Stay awake.” He didn’t even look up from the computer. “Concussion protocol.”

 _Tell him that’s an old wives’ tale,_ Baby said. _Unless you’re getting worse. Are you getting worse?_

“I’m not getting better.”

_Not what I asked._

“How can I possibly get any worse?”

_You tell me._

I gritted my teeth. Sam had his head tilted toward me, not looking at me but listening curiously. “It’s only been a few hours, Baby. I don’t know.”

_Thoughts are all over the place as usual. I think you’re gonna be just fine._

“You’re damn right I am,” I muttered under my breath. Then I looked to Sam. “You ok?”

“Yeah, yeah. Fine.” Distracted, brushing me off like a fly, too intent on that damned computer. I squinted at it, but the light kinda hurt my eyes. He had it angled away from me anyway, so I couldn’t read it.

“What’re you looking at?”

“Freeways opened back up about an hour ago,” he replied. “No more insane weather on the way for a little while, at least.”

“Good. I’m ready to get the hell on.” I itched at the bandage on my head. “Can we go somewhere hot? Please? My bones still aren’t thawed.”

“Don’t even talk to me about that.” Sam glared at me over the lid of his laptop, then went right back to staring. “Mojave Desert hot enough for you?”

 _Ooh, road trip out west! I’m so there. So many straight roads. Lots of places to go fast._ I could almost hear my car revving her engine in excitement. _Where we going? Vegas?_

“Vegas? Hell yeah,” I said, smiling to myself. Poker, gambling, drinking, scantily-clad women… just the vacation I needed after getting my ass handed to me by a Coloradan skinwalker.

Sam was shaking his head, which had me frowning deeply. “Not Vegas. I was thinking Phoenix.”

I wrinkled my nose. “Phoenix? What’s there that I can’t get in Vegas?”

 “I think I found us a case.”

_And right back to the grind, eh?_

“No!” I tried to slap a fist on the mattress, but the gesture was sloppy and muted. Sam didn’t even look up. “Dude. Look at us. We’re jacked up. You’ve got a broken arm, I’ve got a broken head, and Baby’s got a broken… everything! We shouldn’t be hunting. _And_ I don’t want to.”

_Hey, hey, now! I’m not scrap metal yet!_

“Just hear me out. I think you’ll actually be interested in this one.” Sam started to swing the computer around so I could see it, but then he mouthed _concussion protocol_ and stopped himself. I just glared at him, lamenting the loss of a Sin City vacation, but I wasn’t gonna give him the satisfaction of knowing I was curious.

He took a breath and went on. “I was looking into the whole living car thing—“

“Damn it, Sammy, give it a rest! You can’t kill Baby and I won’t let you!” Could you give someone a nosebleed with a wadded-up sock? I wanted to find out.

“Listen! This isn’t about the Impala. I mean… yeah, it started out like that, but look, I think I found something worth checking out,” Sam sighed. Then, before I could bitch him out any more, he thrust a finger at his computer and read off the screen. “There’s this site called ‘Speed Demons’ I’ve been poking around on. A lot of it seems like a load of crap, you know, like bad synopses of King books—but there’s some stuff I think’s got some truth to it. Like… here.” He clicked around. “There’s a whole thread dedicated to the Mojave’s ‘blood car’.”

That got my attention. Both eyebrows shot up my forehead. “’Blood car’?”

“Urban legend, started sometime in the 70s. There are a few iterations, but it all boils down to the same thing.” Sam squinted at the screen. “Some old car appears outta nowhere, pulls up to someone, they get in, and they disappear for weeks before turning up again.” He flicked an index finger over the touchpad. “Well, parts of them, anyway. Bottom line’s this: you get in the blood car, you don’t get back out in one piece.”

_Ooh, yeah. Sounds like a damn good time, don’t you think, driver?_

I squinted at Sam, ignoring the glare of the light on the side table behind him, but I was smiling, mostly to myself. “Any recent sightings?”

“That’s actually why the thread was on the front page. Nothing in the past couple months, but it seems most disappearances associated with the blood car happen around the same time annually. Right around the Phoenix Auto Expo.” He looked up over the lid of his computer. “Guess what’s on the schedule for next week?”

_Auto Expo, here we come._

“Seriously? I only hit my head, like, six times in the last few days.” I rubbed at my temple, dragged the comforter over my shoulders. “I don’t wanna do shit.”

_Hell, if you don’t wanna take this one, I’ll go by myself._

“You’re not going by yourself!” I snapped.

“Well, I think it’s worth checking out.” Sam shut his laptop with his good arm, set it to the side, and settled back with his cast across his chest. Whether or not he knew I was talking to Baby… he’d have to get used to that. “My vote gets we recoup for a few days—“

_Get ME to a body shop…_

I laughed at that. Sam glared at me.

“—and then we hit the road.”

“Dry-ass desert, here we come,” I echoed Baby. “No more skinwalker, no more snow. I’m damn ready.”

 _After a few days’ rest,_ my car said sternly.

Sam was quiet for a long moment. I figured he was asleep, but then he shifted, pushed his good hand through his hair, and said, “If it’s all the same to you, Dean, I don’t want you driving with your concussion.”

“You’ve got a busted wrist,” I pointed out. “The hell I’m letting you drive!”

“Well,” Sam said, a smile flicking at the corners of his mouth. “Guess it’s a good thing we got the Impala for that.”

**-END-**


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